Turns out Marc Bergevin did make a series of terrific offseason moves and more ahead of the trade deadline to make this team a contender. The very nature of that season hid how good they were. They always had it in them, even during that long, desperate grind of a 59-point pandemic season. So don’t tell me the Canadiens can’t do it. The score was 5-1 when we went to hear Buddy Guy at the Esquire Show Bar on Stanley St., and it was the blues legend who informed us that the Canadiens had stormed back to win, 7-5, with Béliveau leading the charge. Cooper and I left the pub where we were watching the Habs get clobbered by Boston. I know this, because that was my first lesson in Habs 101: I arrived here in 1971, at about the same time as Frank Mahovlich and a couple of months ahead of Ken Dryden. Never mind what the talking heads tell you or how impossible it seems: when the Canadiens have the wind at their backs, they’re well-nigh unbeatable. Now the Knights are just a skpeed bump on the highway of life. They pack more tradition into one Christmas sweater than the Golden Knights can squeeze out of a battalion of cheerleaders. Remember, the Canadiens were a team before Las Vegas was a wide spot in the road. Talk about faceoff percentages and puck possession and how many goals you’re getting from the defence, and it’s still a cup of warm spit next to that voodoo tide the Canadiens unleash when they catch one of these waves. With all that juju on their side, you didn’t thing the Canadiens were going to lose to the Vegas Knights, did you? Especially now that they have the Forum ghosts on their side – beginning with Bad Joe Hall, who died during another pandemic 102 years ago? It was also the 37 th anniversary of the death, on June 24, 1984, of stiff-necked former NHL commissioner Clarence Campbell, the man whose antagonism toward Rocket Richard touched off the Richard Riot and the Quiet Revolution. Fifty years since the Miracle Cup of 1971, fifty years since the month when Jean Béliveau retired, Scotty Bowman was hired and Guy Lafleur was drafted. The first time in 28 years the Canadiens had a chance to book a spot in the Stanley Cup final by winning a hockey game. It was a fateful concatenation of events. Cars roared past decorated with the Canadiens flag in one window and the Quebec fleur-de-lys in another. There were intermittent bursts of fireworks. Between the third period and the beginning of the overtime Thursday night, a fat moon rose through a haze of streaky cloud over Montreal.
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