PHILADELPHIA - They took their fans from coast-to-coast on an unlikely trip through the spring, past melting snowbanks, the opening of patios and pools, the first mosquitoes and through the Victoria Day weekend.
But the Montreal Canadiens aren’t going to make it to June.
Their deepest playoff run in 17 years, six glorious weeks of resurrections and upsets, finally ended Monday, out of gas, out of goals and out of the playoffs.
“You look at every movie and what happens if Rocky lost at the end?” asked Canadiens defenceman Hal Gill, a tower of defensive stability through the first two rounds. “The Cinderella story was the one we wanted to do, but the Cinderella story doesn’t matter if Cinderella doesn’t pull it out.”
The Habs, the eighth and last seed in the Eastern Conference, downed the Washington Capitals, best team in the regular season, and the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins in the first two rounds, but drew a blank - three of them, literally - against the Philadelphia Flyers, the seventh-seed who had their own epic karma this spring.
What made this Canadiens run so special was that it came seemingly from nowhere, a team needing a charity overtime point against the last-place Toronto Maple Leafs on their last night of the regular season just to make it into the playoffs.
Few picked them to beat the Presidents Trophy-winning Caps; only slightly more to take out the Penguins.
They were disrespected by both. Remember Caps defenceman Mike Green saying “they don’t have much” after Washington’s victory in Game 4 at the Bell Centre?
Penguins defenceman Kris Letang said the Habs wouldn’t have enough to hang with the defending Stanley Cup champions in a seven-game series.
The fans learned about the ability fo goaltender Jaroslav Halak to bounce back, the exciting potential of young defenceman P.K. Subban, how winger Mike Cammalleri likes to number his sticks from the beginning of the season (he was taping number 87 at his stall after the morning skate Monday. How much do you think he would have liked to get well into the nineties?).
Former general manager Bob Gainey’s summer signings - for which he took so much heat for making a small team smaller - wound up looking pretty good with Cammalleri leading the playoffs in goals, Gill - who showed his value is in April and May helping shut down Alex Ovechkin and then Sidney Crosby - and little Brian Gionta playing big in front of the opponent’s net.
They played through the long weekend in May despite not having top defenceman Andrei Markov for what amounted to the last two rounds (he blew out his knee in the first period of the second round against Pittsburgh), with half of their top six forwards going without a goal for a combined 47 games (Tomas Plekanec, 13, Andrei Kostitsyn, 17 and Scott Gomez had gone 17 before scoring Monday night).
They were sunk by a power play that couldn’t figure out a way to beat Flyers goaltender Michael Leighton, going 1-for-22 in the series (the only goal was the fifth in the 5-1 Montreal win in Game 3 in Montreal). After Gomez had scored to make it 3-2 with 13 minutes to go, it couldn’t convert on a double highsticking minor to Flyer Chris Pronger, the last minute of which was negated by a tripping minor by Montreal’s Glen Metropolit.
Think they missed Markov?
But it still wound up being special, something lost in the hurt of the end of the run, but will be increasingly evident in the summer sun.
Cammalleri summed up what Canadiens fans across Canada are feeling.
“I’m not ready for summer yet.”
