You will notice that last night’s ignominious loss to the no-longer-lowly Leafs leaves your Montreal Canadiens with only eight more games in the friendly confines of the Bell Centre, where the braying of their loyal fans echoes the Commentariat’s collective wisdom as pertains to NHL officiating.

The Canadiens will play 12 games on the road – the last of which is an April 9 encounter at the Air Canada Centre with the aforementioned Leafs.

The Canadiens’ 71 points have them in sixth place, six points clear of the Eastern Conference’s final playoff spot. Eighth place is occupied, for the moment, by Carolina, which is at the Bell Centre tomorrow night.

As was the case with Toronto last night, the Hurricanes will need a win more than the Canadiens.

Maybe they’ll play that way, as the Leafs did last night.

And maybe a sixth-place team doesn’t have to play with the urgency of a team scambling for a playoff spot. 

Maybe a team that thinks a playoff spot is in the bag can get away with starting its seldom-used backup goaltender against a hungrier team, despite the first-string goaltender’s consecutive Bell Centre shutouts of the Leafs.

We now have evidence to the contrary.

The good news: Carolina doesn’t have anyone as hot as Phil Kessel. A better player, in Eric Staal, yes. But no one as hot.

I know we hate to say anything positive about a player in a blue and white uniform, but Kessel was spectacular last night and full value for his First Star selection.

He has more goals than Alex Ovechkin. And in a pressure-packed road game his team needed badly, Kessel showed up big time.

The Canadiens had no answers for him.

Kessel’s speed was particularly troublesome to the left side of the Canadiens’ D, where he consistently torched Roman Hamrlik and Hal Gill.

Brent Sopel should be here today and likely will dress against Carolina. I’d guess Paul Mara or Yannick Weber will sit out.

I think Pierre Gauthier has to make another move. Jeff Halpern has succeeded Travis Moen as the Top Six Forward Who Wouldn’t Be Top Six On a Good Team.

Tomas Plekanec was outstanding last night and Mike Cammalleri has bounced back impressively from his injury. They need a better finisher than Halpern.

Benoit Pouliot? Maybe, but Benny’s intensity is up and down like a tart’s knickers. He played all of six minutes last night. Linemates David Desharnais and Ryan White were in single digits as well, owing to all those power plays and penalty-kills.

Scott Gomez? Two goals and eight assists in 2011. DD, playing far fewer minutes, has six goals and seven assists.

It has become painful to watch Gomez struggle: the predictable moves, the errant passes, the shots that aren’t even close.

Gomez has run out of time to make the second-half push we saw last season.

And yes, he had 14 points in the postseason. But the Canadiens aren’t in the playoffs yet.

The time is now.

•  •  •

Jacques Martin gets toasted in the Comments section, like this from habs001:

it makes no sense that after a tiring road trip where in the final game of the trip pouliot,dd and eller hardly played and they hardly play today…if these players cannot play vs the leafs how are they going to play vs the bruins/flyers…halpern on the second line vs the leafs?…hammer is just not agile and fast enough to play pp point…a complete strategy error fest by martin…i can understand we play conservative vs the elite teams as frankly we cannot beat them by pure talent…but vs the leafs we have to roll four lines and this way there are many shifts that are major advantage for us…martin played this game like the leafs are an elite team and we are scared of them …

and RockinRey:

What is telling about this team is Martin (has to or ) feels like he has to shorten the bench almost every game. Philly , Boston and can roll four lines and the only way Montreal beats these two teams is to use a rope a dope. They have to start drafting guys that can put pucks in the net. Montreal deserves a bona fide gaol scorer

This organization has not managed its assets very well. The cupboard is bare. They are very thin on ALL lines. They have some good moments, heck even some good games but they should not be losing to a team like  this that out of the playoffs. Where the hell is the offense on the other lines?

Brutal. Go out and get a scorer. And get rid of JM after this season. This emphasis on defense is getting so tiring!!

But the most astute analysis, again, is from PeterD:

Sure, your Montreal Canadiens have lost three times to Toronto this season … plus twice to Edmonton … and twice to the Islanders.

But the latest embarrassment is part of the master plan.

Conscious of the power Pierre Gauthier holds over their lives, the Canadiens lost this game to make their general manager look good.

Think about it:

Gauthier trades for Brent Sopel, a defenceman whose forte is the penalty-kill.

And within hours of the deal being announced and with help on its way, the Canadiens give up three power-play goals.

The general manager is a genius, and his team will do anything to prove it.

QED

In the pressbox after the game, we were talking about Tyler Bozak’s first power-play goal.

Arpon Basu asked if anyone could remember the Canadiens’ PK looking worse.

Phil Kessel had the puck behind Carey Price’s net. Hal Gill and P.K. Subban were watching him. So were Travis Moen and Scott F. Gomez.

Four defenders mesmerized by a player whose passing artistry from behind the net reminds no one of Wayne Gretzky.

And with all that attention, Kessel managed to get the puck to Bozak in the slot. As four red jerseys pivoted like a Temptations tribute band made up of graceless white guys, Bozak whipped it home.

It was Toronto’s fourth goal, and Jacques Martin said it broke his team’s back.

The coach trotted out his usual “special teams” mantra to explain the Canadiens’ latest crap outing against an ostensibly inferior team.

The PK was a mess.

The power playproduced two goals in 20 seconds, by Mike Cammalleri and James Wisniewski, but couldn’t do anything with three subsequent opportunities.

Perimeter passing was there on the PP. Net presence was not. 

And once again, P.K. Subban got minimal minutes with the man advantage: 2:21 vs. 6:35 for Wiz and Roman Hamrlik.

This was not one of P.K.’s better games. The kid is still prone to trying to do too much, particularly when the Canadiens are trailing. The Leafs have speedy forwards and were able to deploy them in a way that minimized Subban’s end-to-end rushes.

The Toronto effort was epitomized by forechecking that kept Carey Price in the net for the final two minutes of the game.

Because the Canadiens spent so much time either killing penalties or on the power play, Martin was unable to get his lines rolling and distribute ToI.

Result: Single-digit minutes for Ryan White, David Desharnais, Benoit Pouliot and Lars Eller. Moen played 10:13, but almost three minutes of that was on the PK.

Tomas Plekanec, as usual, played in all situations and showed flashes of his great speed, baffling a Toronto D that isn’t the league’s fastest. Pleks also won 17 of 25 faceoffs.

His linemates were Cammalleri, who has looked better bouncing back from injury than he did last year, and Jeff Halpern.

I love my man from Princeton, but a serious Stanley Cup aspirant does not have a Jeff Halpern playing 13:25 at even strength as a Top Six forward in a game you’re trailing.

More about those aspirations tomorrow.

•  •  •

Mike Komisarek played 10:45  – seven minutes less than Yannick Weber.

But the big stiff was plus-2.

Photo Shop of the Kiddie Corps by the great GG11 and posted to her Women on the ledge web site

Want to nit-pick?

May as well. There’s no football on TV.

• The Canadiens took their 10th bench minor of the season for Too Many Men on the ice. Only Tampa Bay, with 11, has more. It must be an organizational faiblesse that Guy Boucher took with him.

• Andrei Kostitsyn’s boarding penalty occurred 200 feet from his own net.

That’s it.

With the exception of those two errors, your Montreal Canadiens played just about a perfect game.

Sure, it was scoreless for 30 minutes. But the Leafs, who always look like Cup contenders against the Canadiens, played like what they are: a bottom-dwelling team that will be selling at the trade deadline.

Mikhail Grabovski, who always brings it against his former team, was a non-factor. Mike Komisarek is Toronto’s sixth defenceman.

After the Boston game, there was a lot of buzz about the formula for beating the Canadiens: Rock ‘em/sock ‘em, Don Cherry hockey. Beat them in the alley, beat them on the ice, beat them at the concession stands.

They’re small. They’re scared. They’ll mass-turtle.

Toronto either wasn’t into trying it or just couldn’t skate fast enough to nail anyone – least of all David Desharnais.

How Brian Burke must have agonized to see a player generously listed as 5’7″ bedazzle his allegedly tough hockey team.

On the drive home, I listened to CKAC’s Dany Dube, my favourite hockey analyst. He said a key to the win was Jacques Martin’s decision to give his players Friday off.

That might have have raised a few eyebrows after the Canadiens’ loss to the lowly Islanders.

But last night’s game was the Canadiens’ fifth in eight days, and February began with three sets of back-to-backs.

Dubé said the extra rest did wonders to restore Roman Hamrlik, who was brilliant against the Leafs, and Jaro Spacek, whose fine work included a shorthanded shift while Hamrlik was in the box. Dubé could have included Jeff Halpern among the geezers who benefitted from time off.

The Canadiens are off today, and the upcoming week is a bit less taxing: the surging Sabres, in what should be an entertaining game at the Bell Centre Tuesday night, then west to Edmonton for a Thursday game and a couple days off preceding the Heritage Classic in Calgary.

There are 25 games left in the regular season, and the Canadiens will play 15 of them on the road.

Not easy, especially for a team beset by injuries. But there were many positive indicators last night – including a third line that’s becoming the second line.

My friend Arpon Basu has written a splendid piece on Desharnais and Benoit Pouliot. We all love Mathieu Darche, but Ryan White brings more speed and grit to that line. With White digging, DD passing and Benny scoring, they’re a joy to watch.

There were reports that Max Pacioretty left the Bell Centre without a sling on his arm. That was good news: Max-Pac’s assist last night gave him points in four straight games, and he’s a critical component of the Canadiens’ Kiddie Corps who brings a physical complement to linemates Brian Gionta and Tomas Plekanec, who was great again last night, particularly on the PK.

Scott Gomez was better than he was against the Islanders. Jacques Martin singled ou Gomez’s backchecking on his first shift, adding that Gmez’s effectiveness is directly proportional to how hard he works.

On a give-and-go, Gomez found DD with a perfect cross-ice pass to the far post for the prettiest goal of the game.

Trouble is, Desharnais is not Gomez’s linemate. Andrei Kostitsyn and Lars Eller continue to struggle. AK46 had the aforementioned dumb penalty, and Eller hasn’t been on the scoresheet since Hosni Mubarak had a secure grip on power.

Enough nit-picking!

Your Montreal Canadiens snapped their losing streak. They’re eight points clear of the final playoff spot and have matched Washington’s total.

And I forgot to mention Carey Price because his excellence is so routine it has become inconspicuous.

Enjoy your Sunday.

•  •  •

Guest Comment from PeterD:

Carey Price’s sixth shutout.

Friday night, the team had a 19-3 third period shot advantage against the Western Conference-leading Red Wings. In one of the more dominant offensive displays of the season, the Canadiens looked like Central Red Army, circa 1975, and if Jimmy Howard hadn’t played like Vladislav Tretiak, the game would have gone to OT.

Last night, the Canadiens were outshot 11-4 and outscored 2-0 in the first period by one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference. They were outskated, outhit and outfought for every loose puck.

How did a latter-day Red Army turn into the Zimbabwean National Guard in 22 hours?

In a segment televised on L’Antichambre, François Gagnon asked Jacques Martin about the Jekyll-and-Habs transformation of his players.

“It’s a good question,” the unhappy coach replied. “You should ask them.”

So Gagnon did.

And Jeff Halpern told him: “I’d like to offer a reason or an excuse, but there aren’t any. We came out flat and had nothing. It’s inexplicable and inexcusable.”

Whom shall we blame?

Did Martin and his staff not prepare their team properly?

Tony Marinaro thought so. On L’Antichambre, Marinaro suggested the Canadiens came out playing a cautious, trapping game that is the antithesis of their natural style, thereby handing initiative to the home team.

Don’t know that I buy that (or Marinaro’s insistence that David Desharnais should have been dressed for the game).

The comeback against Detroit may have had the Canadiens thinking they didn’t have to do much more than lace up to secure two points in Toronto.

And starting Alex Auld was basically saying “This is how much we think you suck”. That had to motivate the Leafs, who needed a W much more than the Canadiens, what with food being flung these days at the ACC.

What did we learn from that suckfest?

Their early season success and (precariously) lofty position in the standings notwithstanding, the Canadiens can’t let up against any team in the NHL.

Twenty minutes of intensity doesn’t do it, against great teams like Detroit or bad ones like Toronto.

And now thw worst part of a tough December schedule begins, with Philadelphia and Boston on consecutive nights at the Bell Centre.

If Scott Gomez’s shin injury keeps him out of the lineup, the Canadiens will be severely overmatched at centre for these games.

I love Halpern. At $600,000 he’s the bargain of the year … as a third- or fourth-line centre.

But bumping Halpern up to Top Six linemates and minutes is going to be problematic, to say the very least, when the Canadiens face Mike Richards/Jeff Carter/Daniel Brière on Wednesday night, followed by Patrice Bergeron/David Krejci/Marc Savard.

Tomas Plekanec can’t play 60 minutes. And as much as I love Lars Eller and his development to date, he’s not a Top Sixer yet.

Nor do I like the prospect of playing those two powerhouses when the most-minutes defence pairing is Roman Hamrlik and … well, who, if Jaro Spacek can’t go? (The bloody ACC, where Canadiens Dmen go to die.)

P.K. Subban was minus-3 in his hometown. He and Alexandre Picard were brutal on Phil Kessel’s goal (and Auld was out of position). Yannick Weber was decent for his 18:42; but if Spacek is out, the three young Dmen are in for major minutes.

If Spatch is on the shelf for a while, Pierre Gauthier may have to pull the trigger on acquiring another defenceman. He’ll hate dealing from a position of weakness, but Gauthier might have to act expeditiously to avoid a middle-third-of-the-schedule tailspin by his overachieving hockey team.

December is about to get very hairy, with seven games on the road.

A cross-continental Colorado-Dallas-Carolina trip will be followed by a two-day Christmas break. Then there’s a Boxing Day game on Long Island and a visit to Washington. The Canadiens close out 2010 with a back-to-backer – their eighth of the season – against Tampa Bay and Florida.

If Gomez and Spacek are out of the lineup for the rest of the month, this team is in trouble.

I don’t know what Carey Price asked for in his latter to Santa (an experienced Dman?), but what he’s going to get is a ton of vulcanized rubber.

•  •  •

The legions of Jacques Martin non-admirers will light up phone-in show switcboards early this week, frothing at the mouth about how the coach ahs undermined P.K. Subban’s confidence.

Gimme a break!

If a three-game enforced hiatus broke the spirit of P.K., then the young man is a lot more fragile than he had his adoring fans believe.

And while Subban watched from the pressbox, the Canadiens beat New Jersey, San Jose and Otawa by a cumulative score of 12-3.

P.K. will be good, maybe great.

But with defencemen not named Bobby Orr or Denis Potvin or Nicklas Lidstrom, it takes time.

•  •  •

And finally, a really excellent and thoughtful analysis from Jean-Vincent Fournier )JVF), a Canadiens fan living in Paris:

Tonight the Canadiens lost to a terrible hockey team.

They may be able to win without Andrei Markov, but the team is 0-2 without Scott Gomez.

The Canadiens’ worst game of the season?

The Antichambre gang thought so, and I’m inclined to agree.

Toronto is not Nashville or Atlanta.

The Canadiens played a horrid first period. They didn’t skate, were outshot 11-4, were consistently second on the puck, lacked energy, gave up two weak goals and that, basically, was the ballgame.

Were the Canadiens tired on the second night of a back-to-backer?

Did they prepare badly for a poor team?

Should Carey Price have started?

Dustin Boyd?

David Desharnais?

Let the second-guessing begin … and continue for four days, until the Flyers and Bruins – ouch! – visit the Bell Centre.

With two Eastern Conference powerhouses coming to town, the Canadiens have Jeff Halpern centring their second line and a depleted D corps.

Any optimists out there?

•  •  •

What we’ll hear all through the beginning of the week is how Jacques Martin has broken P.K. Subban’s confidence.

Please.

Subban is not the first young Canadien to watch games from the pressbox.

And with the Canadiens pressing and Alex Auld on the bench, P.K. pulled one of his classic, pre-benching moves:

The long wind-up, the ill-advised slapper right at a defender, with plenty of time to make a play.

Puck squirts out, 3-1 and goodnight, nurse.

The kid is going to be a terrific player. P.K. moved the puck effectively and with speed as the Canadiens climbed out of their 0-2 hole and back into the game.

But Subban is a work in progress. He ended the game minus-3. He still takes himself out of position in his own zone. 

And Mike Richards is coming to town.

•  •  •

Encouraging signs?

• Mike Cammalleri was elevated to the Tomas Plekanec line and was a threat throughout the game.

• Benoit Pouliot used his size and skill to befuddle the Toronto D … not that it’s difficult.

• Josh Gorges played 20 strong minutes and was more physical than usual.

• The Canadiens blocked 25 shots.

Enough Polyanna nonsense.

Your Montreal Canadiens lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and that does not augur well for the rest of the December schedule.

•  •  • 

One lousy power play against a terrible team that includes cheap-shot artists Mikhail Grabovski and Colby Armstrong?

Tom Kowal is this season’s Chris Lee.

•  •  •

Lars Eller on faceoffs:

2-7 in Detroit, 2-10 in Toronto.

The Danish Yanic Perreault he isn’t.

•  •  •

What the heck did Jaro Spacek do to make Clarke MacArthur, a former Buffalo teammate, attack him?

•  •  •

Classic moment on L’Antichambre:

While Mario Tremblay is taking a sip froma water bottle, Tony Marinaro asks him why Tom yatt played tonight.

Mario does a Danny Thomas spit take, and Michel Bergeron pisses himself laughing.

A lost weekend.

Pretty darned good, eh?

Better than we expected?

As the young people say, for shizzy.

After 20 games last season, the Canadiens were 9-11. In Game 20, a 2-0 loss to Nashville, they gave up 55 shots on goal.

They are 13-6-1, good for third overall in the Eastern Conference and the league. In Game 20, they outshot the Leafs 38-30. 

The Leafs aren’t very good, and we’ll have a better idea of where the Canadiens are at when they face the Flyers in the unfriendly confines of whatever they call the barn in Philadelphia. (Isn’t Wachovia bankrupt … just like the style of hockey that team plays?)

But as we wait to see if the Alouettes can make this a total Screw TO weekend, let’s feel good about a team that has:

• great goaltending

• a ridiculously good penalty-kill

• Four solid, experienced defenceman plus a spectacular rookie and a retread who’s found a home

• a much-improved supporting cast; and,last but not least

• a coach who is pushing all the right buttons.

Jacques Martin will never be mistaken for Pat Burns.

Fiery he is not.

Colourful he never will be.

But this guy has coached more than 1,300 regular-season and playoff games in the world’s best hockey league.

Martin is smart. And the demeanour of his team suggests he’s good at understanding and extracting the best from modern hockey players.

2: Sleeps until the Canadiens play the Flyers in Philadelphia

90.5: Canadiens league-leading penalty-kill percentage

6: Power-play goals scored by the Leafs in two games before facing the league’s best PK

29: the jersey number of the last Canadiens goaltender to shut the Leafs out on Montreal ice.

62: Home games against Toronto since the last SO

33 years, eight days: Since Ken Dryden did it on Nov. 12, 1977

134: Regular season games, during which he totalled four shutouts, Carey Price had played heading into this season

41: Number of games Price played in 2009-’10 without posting a shutout

19: Number of starts Price has needed to ring up four goose eggs this season.

8: Jersey number of the player who set Mike Cammalleri up for his nicest one-timer of the season

0: Number of Canadiens who wear the number 8

One more 8: Brian Gionta’s shots on goal in game the Canadiens could have won 6-0.

They were that dominant.

There were that many odd-man rushes against a very slow Toronto D.

In his post-game remarks, Jacques Martin spread the credit around:

• Roman Hamrlik and Jaro Spacek, whom Martin praised for bouncing back from a tough night against Nashville

• The PK in general and Jeff Halpern in particular

• The Lars Eller line, which “created some chances and were good defensively”. Martin professed “complete faith” in Eller

• The shot-blockers (Hal Gill had five); “We have people who are committed,” Martin said.

The coach did most of his gushing … OK, quiet, Jacques Martin-type gushing … about his goaltender.

He praised Carey Price’s maturity, work ethic and even-keel temperament, in victory and defeat.

“Last year was a tremendous growth year for Carey Price,” Martin said. “It may be difficult to understand, and it might have been hard for him to realize it, but what happened last year was good for his career.”

In other words, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, once they make the trade that had half of Montreal wanting to kill Pierre Gauthier.

Martin reiterated that the organization’s faith in Carey Price has never wavered.

The goaltender has excelled at every level of hockey, the coach added, and it is “normal for him to keep growing.”

More numbers:

Price and Michal Neuvirth are tied with 12 wins.

He and Tim Thomas are tied with four shutouts.

Price’s GAA of 2.00 is fith in the league, his save percentage of 93.2 is seventh.

No goaltender has played more minutes.

Only Jonas Hiller has made more saves. 

Price was outstanding and had good support from his D and forwards, who consistently came back to help with zone-clearing.

But hey … it was the Leafs.

Monday night will be more challenging.

Canadiens could have, should have, would have had five.

And how about Carey Price, huh?

Could be.

And the Canadiens are only 1-1 against crap teams: the Islanders Z-squad in that exhibition game in Quebec City and the woeful Leafs at the ACC.

A loss is a loss, but there were mitigating factors:

No Andrei Markov.

No Mike Cammalleri.

No Roman Hamrlik.

The first two were missed on the Canadiens power-play, which went 0-for-5.

The absence of Hamrlik was less of a factor. The Canadiens’ highly suspect D played a strong game against a weak group of Toronto forwards.

Yes, Clarke MacArthur looked like his former teammate, Thomas Vanek, on the winning goal. But with the exception of Phil Kessel, the other Leafs fired blanks (including a shot-less stretch of more than 10 minutes in the second period).

Carey Price?

Solid but not spectacular. Some huge saves on Kessel, including a cat-quick late-game stop that kept the margin at 3-2 and set the stage for some last-second pressure on Jean-Sebastien Giguère.

(Elliotte Friedman’s excellent interview with Price, including an account of the flare-up with Andrei Markov last season.)

On L’Antichambre, panelists praised the intensity, character and work ethic of the Canadiens. 

The team came out thumping – recording five of the first six hits – and were not intimidated by the allegedly scary Leafs. Brian Burke’s truculent team includes small forwards and a defence corps that has size but limited skill and mobility. The Canadiens’ D, missing two regulars, had three blown assigments and Toronto cashed each time.

Forechecking by the Canadiens third and fourth lines created chaos in the Toronto end. And if Giguère hadn’t been at the top of his game …

Again, no points to show for the evening, but there was a lot to like:

• Lars Eller: The Canadiens cleaned house in their pro scouting department, but I hope there was a bonius for whoever recommended this kid. Eller was minus-2, but had two shots, missed the net three times and had two shots blocked. Stats don’t tell the story, though. Eller played with skill, smarts and confidence. For my money, he’s a Top Six forward who should be tried on the wing with Scott Gomez and Brian Gionta when Cammalleri returns.

• Dustin Boyd was the only player Jacques Martin singled out in his postgame French remarks. The newcomer played almost 15 minutes, including more than three minutes of excellent PK time – and had three shots and the goal that put the Canadiens back in the game. He seems to have good chemistry with a renascent Maxim Lapierre.

• Jeff Halpern was superb on the PK and played 10:40 – solid minutes for a fourth-liner.

• Josh Gorges had four hits, blocked three shots and kept his head through the rare sequences when the Leafs managed to maintain control of the puck in the Canadiens’ end. He and Hal Gill continue to play complementary D.

• P.K. Subban took another penalty – his ninth, if you include the pre-season – but played with admirable discipline. The RDS guys praised his sang-froid. We didn’t see the patented rushes until late in the game, when the Canadiens were scrambling to tie it up.

• Andrei Kostitsyn had a few shots and played like he cared.

• The defence pairing of Ryan O’Byrne and Alexandre Picard had a shaky start but improved as the game went on. O’B had some big hits, and Picard moved the puck effectively.

Other observations:

• Tom Pyatt was great on the P.K but took a penalty with four minutes left in a one-goial game.

• Tomas Plekanec had four hits but lacked the explosiveness we saw in the pre-season. He missed Cammalleri.

• Benoit Pouliot is playing his way out of the Top Six. Martin was reduced to using Mathieu Darche with Gomez and Gionta, demoting Benny to fourth-line duty. He had no shots on goal, did little of consequence in the O-zone and had a neutral-zone turnover that sprung Kessel for the Leafs’ second goal.

• The Captain forced Giguère into a couple game-saving stops in the dying seconds. But he and Gomez exerted little in the way of sustained pressure – possibly because they didn’t get much help from Benny.

• Where was Playoffs Gill?

Trotting out his favourite mantra for the opener, Martin said special teams were crucial. The Canadiens should have had more to show for three man advantages. They consistently lost crucial faceoffs to begin PPs, Subban was jittery at the point and there was only one occasion when the first wave managed to maintain control for more than a minute … without scoring.

The power-play will be more dangerous with Cammalleri and Markov.

On to Pittsburgh, where the Penguins will be good and pissed after opening their new building with a loss to Philadelphia – a game in which Sid and Geno were kept off the scoresheet.

•  •  •

With Wade Redden in the AHL, is there a more overpaid Dman in the league than Mike Komisarek?

He played 12:08, had two hits (Josh Gorges and Tomas Plekanec had four each) and was on for both Canadiens’ goals.

What a stiff. And Dion Phaneuf ain’t much better.

•  •  •

Mathias Brunet of La Presse put it well in a Tweet: The Future of the Canadiens is in good hands with P.K., Eller and Price.

•  •  •

LOVED the work of Mario Tremblay on RDS. He and Joël Bouchard are a good team.

And Benoit Brunet, who was ripped in La Presse this week, has picked up his game.

•  •  •

I missed Coach’s Corner, but Commenters say Don Cherry was all over the Halk trade.

First time in history he and Jack Todd agree on anything.

Jean-Sebastien Giguere made 26 saves  – including two in the dying seconds to preserve the win.

An overtime loss to the second-worst team in the league is the occasion for sighs of relief, high-fives and much merriment in the watering holes of Crescent St., the Main and St. Denis.

And why not?

Your Montreal Canadiens are riding their three-game losing streak right into the playoffs.

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After throwing my back out doing a celebratory handspring, I’m day-to-day for The Dance, partners for which are still undetermined.

Depending on what happens in Philadelphia, the Canadiens will finish seventh (if the Rangers win) or eighth (if it’s the Flyers).

A seven seeding means either the Devils or Sabres as first-round opponents.

Eighth place is … gulp! … Washington, which will finish with at least a 32-point bulge on the Canadiens, while scoring 98 more goals, with a game to go.

On the other hand, the Canadiens have allowed six fewer goals, with the Caps playing Boston tomorrow.

Possible first series goaltenders: Ryan Miller, Martin Brodeur or – wait for it – José Theodore.

And at the other end of the ice, on Wednesday or Thursday night: Jaro Halak.

I guess.

You dance with the girl what brung ya, but Jaro was beaten four times  by the Leafs, did not look great and was a rare no-show in the dressing room.

He was outplayed by Jean-Sébastien Giguère, the latest Québécois goalie to give the Canadiens fits. Giggy made 34 stops and was helped by his goalposts, which the Canadiens managed to ding four times.

Mike Zeissberger, who writes for the Toronto Sun, said the ultimate playoff series would be a Canadiens-Leafs best-of-seven. There’s always something special in the air when the two rivals hook up, and this game was no exception.

Toronto always plays the Canadiens tough.

But let’s be serious: the Leafs suck. And the difficulty with which the Cnaadiens managed to secure the point they needed does not augur well for a deep run in the postseason.

On the other hand (I hate that phrase and I’ve used it twice; what HIO needs is a one-armed hockey blogger), the playoffs are a new season. Everyone starts with a clean slate and the opportunity to redeem himself.

Redemption started early for some Canadiens’ veterans:

• Scott Gomez was spectacular against the Leafs. Four shots on goal while centring the team’s most effective line, 15-11 on faceoffs and a continually dangerous presence in the Leafs’ end. In a must wine (or tie) game, Gomez played like a winner.

• Andrei Markov scored a goal, assisted on two others and was in total mastery for every minute of the 25 he played. This was vintage Markov, maybe the best he’s been since the Olympics.

• Brian Gionta had 10 shots on goal and was in Giguère’s face all night.

• Benoit Pouliot elevated his game to match the do-or-die efforts of his veteran linemates. This was a very positive development, because Benny has been struggling for a while, raising the spectre of his chronic underachievement  in Minnesota.

• Mike Cammalleri played like his hair was on fire. He had six shots on goal and looked very much like the dangerous sniper he was before the knee injury.

• Marc-André Bergeron, who began the season out of hockey, ended it playing 24:22 – second only to Markov. MAB scored the most important goal of the game, giving the Canadiens a 3-2 lead heading into the final 20 minutes, and made several alert plays and crisp first passes on D. 

Enough with the fourth-line nonsense: MAB is a defenceman. And he had to be because Ryan O’Byrne played a grand total of 1:46 – one shift in each period.

Jacques Martin used a short bench all night, mostly rolling three lines. It worked because final score notwithstanding, the Canadiens held a territorial advantage and would have won easily were it not for Giguère … and, it must be said, sub-par Jaro.

To protect the lead in the third period, Martin benched Andrei Kostitsyn and promoted Mathieu Darche to Tomas Plekanec’s line. The move paid off in several nice puck-possession shifts, but the enigmatic AK will be back for the playoffs.

Sergei?

I don’t know. Martin made the odd assertion that a team needs “25 or 26 players” during the postseason. Maybe BGL is coming back.

Can this team make some noise?

Beats me.

I thought they’d lose in regulation to Toronto, setting up a city-wide nervous breakdown on Sunday afternoon.

As it is, we can spend the Lord’s day not giving a rip what happens around the league.

The Canadiens spent a week chasing that bloody elusive point.

They finally got it, and that’s cause for modest celebration.

•  •  •

Classy:

The Canadiens lined up to shake Dan Marouelli’s hand after the game.

Scott Gomez hugged him.

They won’t be doing that for Chris Lee.

•  •  •

Fight of the Night: Evander Kane makes Marc Savard and many others happy by demolishing Matt Cooke.

And a salute to the fans

Maybe we can stop talking, at least for now, about overtaking Buffalo or making a deep run in the playoffs.

Your Montreal Canadiens played badly – down to the level of their opposition, as was the case against Edmonton – and they salvaged a point.

With Philadelphia and Ottawa losing, the Canadiens had a chance to jump up the Eastern Conference standings.

Their failure to do so is not cause for excessive worry.

A bit of tweaking and they’ll be ready for a HUGE four-pointer against Ottawa on Monday.

First tweak: Marc-André Bergeron probably will dress against the Senators. The power play went 1-for-6, and it wasn’t pretty.

Jaroslav Spacek played 5:29 on the PP. He had zero shots on goal.

Josh Gorges had 3:45 of PP time. One shot.

The Leafs crowded the slot, pressured the puck and forced the Canadiens into jittery, ill-conceived plays with the man advantage. No one went to the net. Everything was on the perimeter.

The MAB laser is badly needed at the point. Gorges does not belong on the power play.

But how will Jacques Martin use him?

Seventh D-man? Maybe. The coach certainly won’t mess with his Top 6, who have played very solid D since the Olympic break.

Fourth-line forward?

Maybe. But Glen Metropolit’s unit played well against Toronto. Along with the third line, they managed to create pressure and maintain puck possession in the Leafs’ end.

The other tweak on Monday night: Mike Cammalleri.

Tomas Plekanec and Andrei Kostitsyn are struggling. Tom Pyatt works his butt off, but the kid is not a top 6 forward.

I don’t know how sharp Cammalleri will be after a long layoff. But he plays his best games at the Bell Centre, and the Pleks line desperately needs a finisher.

Jacques Martin was not happy with his team’s work ethic at the ACC.

The coach said there was too much space between defencemen and forwards, too many long, low-percentage passes; not enough instances when the Canadiens were able to attack with speed.

Again, the team seems to play to the level of his competition.

The Leafs have heart. They’re young and they play hard.

But like Edmonton, which also took the Canadiens to a shootout, Toronto is a crap team.

A big indicator: the Canadiens, who average almost five minor penalties per game, took one. Scott Gomez’s retaliatory elbow on Dion Phaneuf cost his team Tyler Bozak’s power-play goal, but the Leafs were unable to muster enough offence to draw a single hook, hold, trip or interference call.

Maybe the absence of penalties indicated lack of intensity. But the Canadiens outhit an allegedly physical team 28-25, and allegedly big thumper Phaneuf was not a factor … although he seemed to take Gomez out of his game to a degree.

Goaltending?

Jaro Halak gave up fat rebounds. He wasn’t great on Phil Kessel’s quick wrister. And Jaro was beaten with dismaying ease by Nikolai Kulemin and John Mitchell in the shotout.

But Halak made 31 saves. And I don’t think the SO loss changed his Number One status.

That said, Price could use some work. I think Jaro will start against Ottawa, but we’ll probably see Carey in one of the mid-week back-to-backs, either in Buffalo or at home against the Panthers.

•  •  •

Tom Pyatt is on Hamilton’s playoff-eligible list and is probably destined for the Bulldogs with Cammalleri coming back.

The interesting question is who sits if MAB plays against Ottawa?

Either Maxim Lapierre or Mathieu Darche … probably Max.

•  •  •

Nothing close to a fight in the game, but Cherry showed four of them on Coach’s Corner.

And the NHL web site had a story and a video of the epic battle between Cam Janssen and Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond, which lasted nearly three minutes and might have been the longest fight in the history of the league.

•  •  •

Mystery solved.

Watching the HNIC pre-game show, I wondered abut Alyonka Larionov, the blonde honey working with  P.J. Stock at the Quebec Red Bull ice racing event.

An e-mail from Stu Hackel, who writes the Slap Shot blog for the New York Times:

She’s Igor’s
oldest daughter. She was working for the Penguins on their website last
season and half of this season, doing weekly video things on the
players, etc. and she mysteriously left in mid-season. She also fancies herself as a music star (along with her
sister, they have a duo act of sorts.

No shortage of witnesses to the crime. You can get about 18,000 in that joint.

And they all had a clear view of Andrei Kostitsyn firing one of his wicked wristers past The Monster in OT, giving the Canadiens two points they didn’t deserve.

Visors are optional in the NHL, but the Canadiens should have been wearing ski masks.

What a heist!

But what the heck, two points.

And for the first time in his last three visits to the ACC, Andrei Markov got through the game without being injured.

For the fourth straight game, the Canadiens gave up more than 40 shots.

They’ve won them all because of one player:

Jaroslav Halak.

Yes, he’s had some breaks. Opponents have hit about six posts on this road trip. The very dangerous Phil Kessel had the winning goal on his stick and fired wide.

But man, this guy makes some stops.

Through four games of the road trip, Halak has faced a mind-blowing 186 shots. His 180 stops represent a sizzling 96.8 save percentage.

Halak is on fire. And until he cools off, Carey Price is going to sit.

There was a buzz for a while that the team played better in front of Halak than Price. But when you look at these crazy shot totals …

Late in the third period, before AK46′s improbable OT winner, Benoit Brunet said the Canadiens cannot continue to play the way they do. The RDS analyst said a “major adjustment” is in order.

This is a very ordinary – with gusts to bad – even-strength hockey team. The Canadiens are being carried by goaltending and special teams: another power-play goal last night, the PK was 4-4, including a 5-on-3.

But some of the stats were scary.

The territorial indicator, shots plus shots blocked plus misses, was 94-43 in favour of Toronto.

That’s an ass-kicking.

Another indicator: Colton Orr went off four roughing seven minutes into the first period. It was Toronto’s second and last penalty of the game.

That’s how much pressure the Canadiens were able to exert: 53 minutes without an opponents’ penalty.

And this was the Leafs, not the Penguins or Sabres or Devils or Hawks or Sharks or …

The Canadiens are giving up 40-plus shots to fellow members of the Parity Division, average teams that will be biting and scratching for playoff spots into late March and early April.

Maybe it’s unseemly to be doing this much whining after a W.

There were mitigating factors.

The Canadiens were finishing up a tough week. The NHL doesn’t allow teams to travel on Christmas day, so they flew into Toronto Saturday morning. It was a long day, and the Canadiens looked tired during the latter part of the third period.

There were positive signs:

Scott Gomez continued his personal revival, scoring on the PP and assisting on the winner.

Tomas Plekanec scored and was solid, as always, on the PK.

Benoit Pouliot had four shots, four hits and continues to offer tantalizing glimpses of what is obviously a first-rate package of skills.

On a night when Andrei Markov wasn’t great, Josh Gorges and Jaro Spacek stepped up. And Hal Gill was good on the PK. Ryan O’Byrne had a couple of hits and blocked shots.

But there wasn’t much cohesion among the forwards. The top line struggled. Mike Cammalleri is 0-for-the trip and hasn’t scored in the better part of two weeks. Pleks and his linemates had some very anxious defensive moments against Toronto’s pluggers.

The 3Ms were outplayed, although Max Pacioretty skated hard and continues to develop into an interesting combination of speed and power.

Maxim Lapierre was 3-3, but the other centres got killed on draws.

If the NHL kept stats on one-on-one puck battles, this would be another embarrassment for the Canadiens.

But a W is a W.

The Canadiens are riding the league’s longest winning streak. Their record on the road is better than they’ve played at the Bell Centre.

On to Ottawa, where Roman Hamrlik may be back while the Senators will be without daniel F. and Jason Spezza.

The consensus was the Canadiens needed eight ponts on their seven-game trip.

Done.

And Jaro Halak looks primed to steal some more.  

Unreal.

And that’s just the regular season.

So what have we got here?

Contender or pretender?

October was bookended by two wins against the hated Leafs. But neither was easy.

Carey Price – remember him? – was the hero on opening night at the ACC, stopping 43 shots through 64:17 before Josh Gorges, of all people, scored in the dying seconds of OT. The joy of starting the season with a W was severely tempered by an injury to Andrei Markov, who hasn’t played since and won’t until February at the earliest.

Last night, a comfortable 4-2 Canadiens lead evaporated in three and a half minutes, and the barber-pole boys – for the love of God, BURN THOSE UNIS!! – needed a shootout to take two more points. Against a team that will be golfing in April, the Canadiens coughed the puck up a mind-biggling 31 TIMES – once for each day in October.

Then as if hideous vintage jerseys and all the centenial bushwah weren’t sufficient hubris and an affront to the Gods of Hockey, the fans had to start serenading Toronto with the Na-na-na-na Goodbye song.

And of course, it turned out the game was not over when the fatuous people sang.

The Cardiac Canadiens, a team that should NEVER be saluted until the final siren sounds.

Between the Leafs and the Leafs, the Canadiens played 12 games in
October and lost seven of them, including spankings at the hands of the
Canucks and Penguins.

The team has won one game in regulation
time this season, a pasting of the hapless Islanders. They’ve won four
in OT, two in Shootouts.

Again, what do we have here?

Let’s do an October-to-October comparison:

A year ago, the Canadiens got off to their best start in 20 years. After losing the opener to Buffalo in a Shootout, the team reeled off five straight wins en route to a 7-1-1 October record. They scored 32 goals, allowed 20 and were 3-0-1 on the road.

This year’s team went 7-7 in October, scoring 38 goals while allowing 45. They have one win in regulation time and are 2-5 on the road.

But in recalling the glory days of October ’08, we can’t ignore what happened in January, February, March and April of 2009. After the All-Star game, the Canadiens season headed south faster than a rich widow with asthma.

To avoid a similar collapse, Bob Gainey blew up his team. The success of that experiment cannot be accurately measured based on the first month of the season.

There is much to like about the team.

• The three FAs who form the top line are talented, exciting and hard-working.

• Tomas Plekanec is off to a great start while centring every winger on the team, plus eight ushers and Charles Prévost Linton. Sign Pleks to an extension, Bob. Don’t wait until summer.

• Travis Moen was a great acquisition and he’s going to teach Max Pacioretty how to play power forward in the NHL.

• Glen Metropolit is an inspiration to his more talented but less dedicated teammates.

• Paul Mara is a good addition to the D. You never notive him, which is high-praise for a (mostly) stay-at-home Dman.

• As evidenced by several scrums last night, the players battle for each other – without benefit of BGL’s highly codified contributions.

• Kyle Chipchura is playing like an NHLer. He’s tough, smart and plays a sound positional game that compensates for his lack of speed.

Problem areas:

• It would be nice if a Number 1 goaltender emerged to carry the
team. I cling to the notion that Carey Price is The Franchise, but Jaro
Halak is 5-2 and Price is 2-5. In reviewing October, a major second-guess on the decision to play Halak in Calgary after Price had stoned the Leafs and Sabres.

• Team defence is inconsistent. Horrible against Vancouver, Pittsburgh and – for three and a half insane minutes – the woeful Leafs. But Jacques Martin’s system has eliminated 40-shot bombardments.

• Roman Hamrlik and Jaroslav Spacek arre averaging almost 25 minutes a game. That’s way too much for old geezers – especially Spatch, who has to cope with playing the right side. Martin’s system also calls for defencemen joining the attack, which means the Dmen come deep, adding more skating to their minutes. This wedar (but, let’s hope, not more tear) will start to show as the season progresses.

• Josh Gorges plays his heart out, but he’s small. Marc-André Bergeron is even smaller; and watching him play D, you undertand why MAB was unemployed when the season began.

• Special teams. A rule of thumb in the NHL is good teams’ power play and penalty killing efficiencies add up to at laest 100. Canadiens PP is at 15.1 per cent, the PK at 75.8. Contrast that to Philadelphia: 26.4 and 86 or San Jose: 25.4 and 84.2

• Secondary scoring is MIA … although there were new names on the sheet last night. Gui! has to score. It’s the reason he’s in the league.

• Andrei Kostitsyn is … I don’t even want to talk about it. A highly skilled first-round draft choice played 7:32 against the Leafs in a game that lasted 65 minutes. AK46 is beyond messed-up. The Canadiens have to either hire a Belarusian psychiatrist or package the brothers in a trade.

So, on to November. Two games against Washington, plus Pittsburgh, Detroit, Boston, Carolina, Calgary and Nashville.

And in the National Parity League, even Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Phoenix aren’t gimmes.

Hold onto your hats … and don’t start singing until the siren sounds.

OT

Shootout

Cammalleri: Wrister. Goal

Stempniak: Easy save

Gomez: Shelf

Kaberle: Save