Whatever you wish to call it, it is in reality one hell of a Stanley Cup Playoffs series - and the Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens have only played two games.
The 34th edition of the Big Bad Bruins and Les Habitants meeting in the post-season for a best-of-seven series has been everything one would expect from bitter rivals, and nothing but the hatred has been held sacred - the hits have been a little harder and the chirping a little louder, both from the players and the fan bases.
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| Julien loses it on the bench while Therrien waits for the presser |
And the chirping coming out of Montreal is more-or-less lament, as instead of the Canadiens bringing a two-games-to-none lead home from Boston, they are level with the Bruins at one game a piece - and you won't hear many Habs' fans blaming anyone but their own hometown heroes.
In both contests thus far in the Eastern Conference Semifinals series, the Canadiens have built two-goal leads, only to see those leads evaporate under heavy pressure from the consistently heavy Bruins - and though Habs' goaltender Carey Price would like everyone to look at it as if the Bruins got some lucky shots by him, the truth is that Price is the lucky one...
...lucky that he didn't get blown out of Game 1 - what with the Bruins' snipers drawing iron on three shots and missing wide open nets three other times, those are six potential scores that would have ended that game in regulation and, coupled with Saturday afternoon's result, would have the Habs down 0-2 and looking for a change between the pipes.
And to hear the Canadiens' fans tell it, they should make the switch to backup goalie Peter Budaj anyway.
Regardless of how one may feel about the Canadiens' team, their fans are a knowledgeable bunch, particularly the big group of them that can be found after the game at the Rock Bottom Grill, a quaint and dirty little pub smack in the middle of the "Little Canada" section of Lewiston, Maine.
With it's French-Canadian heritage, Lewiston is a melting pot of sorts, the elder gentry partial to the Canadiens - their colors flying from poles adding a certain je ne sais quoi to their already vibrantly decorated front yards - while the younger crowd boasts allegiance to the Bruins and favor the powerful darkness of their home colors to give them a sort of unyielding quality.
On this night I was the only Bruins' fan in the place, listening to the incessant whining about Price while trying to make sense of my game notes over a cup of their fantastic coffee before writing my game recap. I expected a rude greeting from the old boys over their Habs' epic collapse, but found only dejection and harsh words for their starting goaltender.
The language is mostly Acadian french, a dialect that draws it's charm from an abundance of colorful metaphors and is diverse enough to include about two dozen different ways for them to tell you to go do something rude to yourself - and I probably heard all of them in the 20 minutes that I sat at the bar surrounded by beer-soaked Frenchmen.
"Price? Tas de merde!" one particularly blended gentleman of around 60 quipped as he glanced at my notes, shaking his head sadly. "My Habs, they are finished."
When I reminded him that the series was tied, he chastised me for my ignorance.
"The first game should have been over by the second intermission" he slurred, "Le habs Il est chanceux ce soir! - until the last 10 minutes then they were not so lucky, huh?" My new-found friend was having trouble with his english, but I got what he was telling me, the Canadiens were overmatched.
I gathered my notes and stood to leave, but Norman (the bartender called him by name and at least three other men turned to look as well) insisted on a cup of coffee and that I accompany him on a short walk to his house - and since I had already missed my deadline, I agreed...
...the walk proving difficult under the circumstances as Norman fell into fits of sobbing and fist shaking as only a Frenchman can do properly, spitting out insults that seemed to be aimed at the hockey gods - stopping briefly to vandalize his neighbor's trash can that had the Canadiens' logo crudely painted on it, then stretching out on a lawnchair in what I assumed was his front yard and drifted off to sleep...
Interestingly enough, Canadiens' coach Michel Therrien appears to agree with my intoxicated friend, as he's taken time away from tinkering with his lines just long enough to fire shots across the bow of the Bruins' battleship, accusing them of dark malfeasance on the ice and with unjust influence from the bench.
"It's always the same thing with Claude" Therrien said when asked about Julien taking a bench minor in Game 2 for chirping a little too loudly at the referees."He's not happy with all the 'crap'".
"They try to influence the referees" Therrien continued. "That's the way they are - that's not going to change. That's the way they do their things, but we all know what they're trying to do." He paused for effect, then "I thought they got away with a lot of things."
Julien's response? "At the end of the day, we've just got to go out there and play our game."
That should tell one everything they need to know about the mindset of the teams coming in to Game 3 in Montreal on Tuesday, and confirms what my drunken french friend was trying to tell me on Saturday evening - because when the coach is in a panic and looking for any excuse he can to cover for his team collapsing in the third period twice in a row, he knows they're in trouble...
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