GLUE, REMINISCING AND THE OVECHKIN SHOW...

Just when you thought the glue holding the Canadiens together was starting to disintegrate, Alex Kovalev showed tiny gleams of the player we all know he has the potential to be, Tomas Plekanec partied like it was 2007 and Chris Higgins finally hit the back of the net after missing so many golden opportunities: talk about killing 3 birds with one stone!

And to top it all off, it was against the “only-a-2-in-the-L-column” Detroit Red Wings, a team that we haven’t won against since… 1) Matheiu Garon was in nets 2) before the lockout 3) Nick Sundstrom (anyone remember him?) was still on the team 4) Mathieu Dandenault was on the other side of the ice and 5) The Bell Centre had empty seats.

All that goes to show is that 5 years is a really long time in the hockey world, but then again it’s pretty short… if I’d have you guess the only current-Hab on the score sheet I’d bet you’d most likely be wrong…. drumroll please…. Steve Begin, getting his first goal of the season that year.

From that, we can tell that this much hasn’t changed: our fourth line still does most of the dirty work and comes up big in wins, our power-play is about the same – awful (going 0-for-5 in that game in 2003) AND Chris Lee is still handing out penalties by the Zamboni-load.

Well we can be thankful he wasn’t reffing the game tonight… fewer penalties gave a wonderful flowy-ness to it, and the guys from both sides were able to display their talent and skill. But it was the Habs who brought it home. Dominant for the first two periods, and playing safe defensive hockey the third, they rightfully took the win from right under the Red Wings, coming back from a – let’s just call it unpleasant – shoot out loss Monday night against the Islanders.

When you get to thinking about it… if it weren’t for the unpleasantness, would we have responded with such a solid effort tonight? I’m not so sure. We needed a wake up call, and that we got… though we should have been answering for days now, but apparently we only got to picking up the phone tonight.

You’re only as good as your next game, and ours is against Hat-trick Ovechkin and his merry Capitals, who will try to rob us of our newly acquired confidence & momentum. The Ovechkin show is always a pleasure to watch (from a fan’s perspective anyhow), but let’s hope our boys don’t get too caught up in it on the ice; we all know how mesmerizing Alex can be. Another hard-earned win would do us wonders… Friday can’t come any quicker!