The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cup championships in their remarkable history, though none since 1993.
They were not supposed to be contenders for No. 24 this season.
The Canadiens barely qualified for the playoffs, sneaking in with 88 points, tied with the Philadelphia Flyers for the fewest of any qualifying Eastern Conference team. The eighth-seeded Habs then shocked the first-seeded Washington Capitals, overcoming a 3-games-to-1 deficit to win a first-round series, 4-3.
Wednesday night, Montreal continued to amaze, clinching a conference semifinal round with a second straight Game 7 road win, a surprising 5-2 conquest of the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.
Montreal moves on to the conference finals. The Habs could face another surprise team, the Flyers, who play a conference semifinal Game 7 at Boston against the Bruins on Friday night.
Dave Stubbs writes about the Canadiens for the Montreal Gazette and Canwest News Service:
Only Wednesday did the team announce it would charter back to Montreal postgame no matter Game 7’s outcome. It would be the first leg of travel to their off-season homes or a tarmac pause en route to an Eastern Conference final-round road trip — their first since their most recent Stanley Cup victory in 1993.
But Cammalleri had packed his bags generously for three games — one in Pittsburgh, two more in Boston or Philadelphia.
In his luggage were memories of having ousted heavily favoured Washington on April 28, the final match in a seven-game quarter-final.
“That was a whatever-it-takes type of night for us,” Cammalleri said. “Find a way to win, enjoy it, play hard, leave it all out there, all those cliches, and it worked out for us.
“(Wednesday night) it’s the same thing. You can’t stress out in preparation thinking of the result. You go to the hotel (to rest pregame) and you say, ‘Hey, you know what? We’re going to come tonight and play as well as we can possibly play, and we’ll see what it happens.’ “
The Canadiens opened the Mellon Arena against the expansion Penguins on Oct. 11, 1967, with a 2-1 victory. Now, 2,222 weeks later, the well-worn building has seen its final hockey game — a much more painful elimination of its prime tenant by Montreal, witnessed by a 165th consecutive sellout.
There is no shortage of Habs heroes. Mike Cammalleri leads the league with 12 playoff goals, including seven against the Penguins. Goalkeeper Jaroslav Halak has denied shot after shot. Then there's Hal Gill, who was a key to the Canadiens' defense on Wednesday night despite nursing a painful injury.
Dave Stubbs writes about Gill, too, for the Gazette and Canwest:
The most painful part of this series for Montreal Canadiens defenceman Hal Gill wasn't the slashed calf he suffered in Game 5.
It was pulling himself out of the lineup for Game 6 when he decided after warm-up that he wasn't fit enough to help his team.
``I really tried to do it,'' Gill said Wednesday night of his aborted return. ``It's tough to say no. But when you can't help your team, you have to suck up your pride a little bit and back out.
``It's nice to have friends who come out and get a big win for you,'' he added of the Canadiens' 4-3 Bell Centre victory in Game 6, a win that sent the series back here for Wednesday night's clincher.
``All I wanted was a Game 7 and a chance to get back in. They played a great game to allow me that. I wasn't as good as I could have been (Wednesday night), but they bailed me out.''
Gill finished the night with 22:10 of action, three blocked shots and one hit. It wasn't a vintage performance, but with a few days off heading into the conference final, he expects to regain top form.
