It took only 33 seconds to safely write off the Montreal Canadiens as just another quaint overachiever, the kind of humorously game yet clinically overmatched entrant that has filled out nearly every conference final field since the National Hockey League decided to have conferences. They come, they seem like an appealing alternative to the oppressive chalk that surrounds them, and then they disappear again to the churn of the pack, hoping for another turn in a decade or so.
It subsequently took 27 seconds to rethink ce paragraphe premier, and then another 10 minutes or so to wonder if the quaint overachiever here isn't actually the Carolina Hurricanes. In those 11 minutes and change, the Canadiens not only scored four goals in response to Carolina’s first, but posed the corresponding matter of whether the Canes had too many days off after their two playoff cake tours. Or maybe Montreal is simply the real deal, and we are about to find out that it doesn't matter that they often cut their margins too fine and don't know what they don't know about high-stakes playoff competition.
Or maybe goalie Jakub Dobes is just on a turboheater that looks a lot like Jonathan Quick's in 2012. That's a possibility, too. Hockey can be a vicious practical joke that way.
We'll get partial answers to all these questions starting Saturday in Game 2, but Game 1 was a clinician's birthday party. Montreal, the team that had cheated fate in two successive seventh games to get past Tampa and then Buffalo, blitzed Carolina early, survived the inevitable second-period clapback, then choked them out slowly in the third to win Game 1, 6-2. At least that's the Canadian view. A Carolinian observer might note that their heroes were rusty in the first period from too much time off, made a valiant but failed effort to seize back the initiative, and took the third period off so as not to waste energy chasing a running dog down a beach in an advancing tide, and that Game 2 will address all noteworthy plot points.
The fun part of the time before Saturday's puck drop is that everybody can be right, because Game 1 is never enough of a sample size to make any reasonable assessment about anything, except there being at least three more games. This much, though, is certain: Montreal is no longer either quaint nor overachieving. All the history about Canadian teams going board-stiff in the postseason is not applicable here, nor Montreal being all pluck and luck, nor Carolina's two series sweeps proving its unbeatability—it's all either stupid or no longer valid. Clever insiders from years gone by always maintained that it was Game 2 that shakes out the nonsense and tells you what kind of series you have.
What makes Montreal more walk and less squawk in this series is the belated re-emergence of its best line. Nick Suzuki centering Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky finally made their collective presence felt both in the box score (three goals and five assists out of 16 total Habs points) but in their noticeable affect on the ice. They'd been a tough search during the later stages of the Buffalo series and their impacts had been replaced more or less by third-line grinders Alexandre Texier, Josh Anderson, and the piano that is Phillip Danault, and series-winning goals from Alex Newhook. That can carry you only so far, though, and eventually the names have to produce the games.
The other development was Dobes reaffirming his place as This Year's New Kid. He had been TYNK through most of Montreal's run, but because he is young and underproven one could fairly expect the bubble to burst at some point, with the test being how quickly he could reinflate it. That moment came in Game 6 of the Buffalo series when he was pulled by coach Martin St. Louis after giving up six of the Sabres' eight goals. He returned to form in Game 7, but the bubble's strength must be checked constantly when its inhabitant is a 24-year-old with fewer than 80 games of full experience who answers questions like "Are you feeling tired?" with "I could play 40 more games," which is a useless but very kid-level boast.
In any event, he showed no signs of rattling after giving up Seth Jarvis's snapper from the right circle on the game's second shot. Dobes's rattle quotient was in some question while Montreal was winning the beer-hockey section of the game, but as the night went on, he returned to Conn Smythe– candidature form and saw to it that Carolina's second-period blitz was tantamount to nothing, and gave his teammates the time and space to learn more about the ground rules of late-playoff-level hockey, while the Hurricanes got another shovelful of "can't-win-round-three-eh-boys?" It's early in the series to haul that storyline out, but it's never too early to kill some time over beers with it just for hoots and snoots.
In sum, Game 1 was about the Canadiens shedding the last bits of their ingenue phase, as they have now had 15 games of every variety—taut, sloppy, sharp and time-wasting—to establish who and what they are. Game 2 will be about what the Canes intend to do about it against a team that is no longer quaint or confused by all the bright lights and loud sounds. They're all veterans now, except maybe Dobes. He still thinks he has another 39 games to go.
