The Canadiens got the Blues on Tuesday night, and the bastards ended the boys’ nice and tidy five-game win streak.
But nobody expects Les Glorieux to be glorious every night. The streak had to end, and it might as well be against one of the league’s best teams – the big, fine skating, hard-hitting, well-balanced pride of St. Louis.
Besides, 4-3 is a respectable losing score. It wasn’t a 6-1 drubbing like they took against Washington in early October. Or 6-0 against Toronto in November when Carey Price was on the shelf and the world as we knew it was coming to an end.
One loss is nothing. All the Habs have to do now is win against the Flames on Thursday night and there will be no reason to think they’re falling off the rails again. Don’t be silly about that.
Three losses however, and Twitter will be all about the Subban trade again.
Jordie Benn’s blast from the blueline would tie things at one apiece in the first, but in the middle frame St. Louis opened it up to 3-1 with two goals just seven seconds apart.
Seven seconds apart. A real killer. And yet, the Canadiens didn’t die. This is the new Montreal Canadiens don’t forget.
Shea Weber fired a long-distance curveball to close the gap, and in the third, Weber again from the blueline tied things and injected some life into a a fairly quiet Bell Centre crowd.
Unfortunately, that was it. Braydon Schenn notched his third of the night to give his team the lead and the visitors skated off with a 4-3 win over the hometown Habs.
All three Montreal goals (Benn’s and Weber’s two), came from far out. In fact, if you were back in the late-1960s and living in say, Yorkville or Haight-Ashbury, you would probably say the goals were “far out.” They’d be far out, far out goals.