Mike Boone's Online Eeee-mail

Good.

Maybe we can stop talking, at least for now, about overtaking Buffalo or making a deep run in the playoffs.

Your Montreal Canadiens played badly – down to the level of their opposition, as was the case against Edmonton – and they salvaged a point.

With Philadelphia and Ottawa losing, the Canadiens had a chance to jump up the Eastern Conference standings.

Their failure to do so is not cause for excessive worry.

A bit of tweaking and they'll be ready for a HUGE four-pointer against Ottawa on Monday.

The winning streak ends at the ACC.

Good news: a point.

Better news: Andrei Markov not injured

Kessel: Miss ... just, post

AK46: Goal, five-hole

Kulemin: Goal

Gomez: Save

Mitchell: Backhand goal

Gionta: Save

Chantal Machabée posted this on Facebook as a salute to the unreal weather we've been having in Montreal.

The late, impossibly great Bob Marley.

He loved soccer, but I just know Bob would have been a Canadiens' fan ... if only for the haze in the old Forum.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Because as we say in Quebec, jamais deux sans trois.

Remember this heart-stopping scare from last month?

And the perp was, of course. Pittsburgh's number 24.

And La Presse's Marc Antoine Godin reports Pierre Gauthier and Don Meehan are talking about a new contract for the incomparable number 79.

•  •  •

The Phoenix Coyotes have won seven in a row.

They are within three points of Chicago and San Jose.

Phoenix has allowed fewer goals than any team not called the Devils.

So tell me again why Dallas fired Dave Tippett.

And why John Tortorella still has a job.

•  •  •

Four Habs Fans is always great, but Photo Shop genius Josie Gold has outdone herself on latest Canadiens signing Hunter Bishop.

Wisniewski gone a good long time for this.

Check out the commentary by the idiot announcers: Seabrook "selling" the penalty.

He was out cold before he hit the ice.

• My main man, the one and only Patrick V. Hickey, on Melnick Underground

* Shout-out to Ayan _SB for pieces on Danny Kristo and Louis Leblanc

I've seen better Hitler spoofs – including the Kovalev   and Markov classics– but video scout Jarred Friedman dug this up to launch a few days of Leaf-bashing

They won't be needing that ... at least for a while.

Barring the most calamitous collapse in the history of the franchise, your Montreal Canadiens are going to be playing hockey in mid-April.

The New York Rangers probably can begin polishing their golf clubs. 

In a must-win four-pointer, the Rangers mustered only 20 shots on goal (to the Canadiens' 35) and were dominated in every aspect of the game ... except for stupidity, and they have a big advantage there with Sean Avery.

The Canadiens played a textbook road game, 

Jacques Martin rolled his four lines (everyone played double-digit minutes except Tom Pyatt, who had 9:49), got a solid game from his six Dmen and superb work on special teams: the Canadiens scored on their first power play (Glen Metropolit, his 1q0th PP goal of the season) and were perfect again in five shorthanded situations.

The Canadiens have not yielded a power play goal since the first period of their home game against Edmonton.

Six wins in a row – all with Jaroslav Halak in goal.

It's taken most of the season, but as Jacques Demers pointed out on l'Antichambre, the Canadiens finally have an identity.

Barring a total collapse ...

What a brilliant effort.

SIXTH place

First Brooks Orpik slams Steven Stamkos with a perfectly legal check.

Then when the play swings up ice, Steve Downie tries to slam Sidney Crosbie down and then lands on his knee.

This league won't be happy until all its stars are in wheelchairs.

Nothing to do with hockey, but a great commercial (tip of the HIO tuque to chief video scout Jarred Friedman).

•  •  •

Final word on the Subbanators:

Either bar those schmucks from the building or rename it the Jolson Centre.

•  •  •

Either we've got technical problems or I totally suck:

Comments on a Thursday night game against the worst team in the NHL: 1,018

Comments after a Saturdanight HNIC game against the haterd Bruins: 647

Feeling good with your Montreal Canadiens four points clear of those not-so-big, not-very-bad-anymore Boston Bruins?

Want to feel even better?

May I suggest a short stroll down memory lane.

A year ago, this team was in disarray.

Kovalev vs. Koivu for leadership of the room. Off-ice scandals. On-ice garbage, most nights.

Guy Carbonneau, who was in the Hockey Night in Canada booth last night, had been fired on the day the Canadiens returned from a road trip o which they'd lost two of three games.

The team won Bob Gainey's first game behind the bench, then lost the next five beforte scraping out enough wins to ride four losses into the playoffs.

We remember what happened in the postseason: El Sweepo at the paws of the dastardly Bruins.

That was then.

And while there are still a dozen regular-season games to play and several rivals alive for playoff spots, I think we can agree this now is much more gratifying than that then.

Five of six against the Bs this season

Six of eight possible points on the road trip.

Three straight at home, five straight overall.

The Canadiens are officially hot.

Friend and colleague Patrick V. Hickey summed up the mood of the media succinctly as we boarded the elevator to head down to the Canadiens' dressing room:

"A game like that," Hickey sighed, "and now we have to interview the Kostitsyn brothers."

I didn't stick around the room long enough to hear clichés tumble out of the mouths of Sergei and Andrei in halting English.

What could they or anyone else say about a game in which the Canadiens were lucky to take points from the worst team in the league? 

This one won't be in the Second Century Classic DVD collection.

Against the worst team in the NHL.

Plekanec: Esay save

Potulny: Four great moves and Jaro saves

Gomez: Save

Horcoff: Save

Gionta: Backhand wide

Brulé: Post!

Pouliot: Save

Nilsson: Save

AK46: GOAL!

Gagner: Wide

Now that we know the Canadiens MVP didn't have his knee destroyed by Mattias Ohlund last night, let's get back to the math problem:

Will the team sign Tomas Plekanec?

And for how much?

As befits the team's hottest player, Scott Gomez offered the most succinct analysis of your seemingly-playoff-bound Montreal Canadiens:

"We're starting to look like the team we should have been all year."

And they're still missing two important players: sniper Mike Cammalleri and power-play specialist Marc-André Bergeron.

Despite their absence, the Canadiens are playing like the team Professor Gainey may have envisaged when he started stitching components together last summer.

Gomez and Gionta aren't as young as they were when they broke in with New Jersey. But energized by the addition of Benoit Pouliot, the former Devils are playing their best hockey of the season.

And they picked a good time to peak.

And crucial, as it drops Tampa Bay seven points back and makes their three in hand less threatening.

The Canadiens have 15 games left in their regular season: nine at home, six on the road.

A fan offers this analysis of why the Canadiens (for whom he uses the first person plural) are in the catbird seat for a playoff spot because of a favorable schedule:

Of the 15 games we have left, six are against teams currently in playoff position (40%). The average point total of the teams we face going forward is 65.4, a total below the Canadiens'.
 
Rangers: 16 games left, eight against teams currently in playoff position (50%). Average point total of opponents: 67.4
 
Lightning: 18 games left, 10 against teams currently in playoff position (56%). Average point total of opponents: 72.5
 
Thrashers: 18 games left, 12 against teams currently in playoff position (67%). Average point total of opponents: 73.3
 
Thrashers have the toughest schedule going forward. In their last five games, they face the top three teams in the Eastern Conference: Penguins twice, Capitals twice and the Devils.

The Canadiens, by contrast, end their regular season against the Conference bottom-dwellers: Leafs, Islanders and Hurricanes).

Plan the parade.

It wasn't quite the 0-5 comeback against the Rangers.

But a week after The Game, this was quite a game.

Down 3-1 on the road with 110 ticks left in the second game of a back-to-backer ...

The Canadiens kicked open the door of the hurt locker and maybe offered an avatar of what we'll see in the regular season's last 15 games.

OK, last desperate try for an Oscar tie-in.

I promise.

The winner was ... the Canadiens, and the improbable W lifted them into seventh place.

Trailing 3-1 with less than two minutes left, the Canadiens tie the game and win it on Tomas Plekanec's shootout goal.

Six of eight points on the road trip. Seventh place.

Unreal.

•  â€¢  â€¢

Hands up everyone who thought this would get to a shootout.

Perry: Save

Markov: Miss

Getzlaf: 5-hole Goal

Gomez: Save

Selanne: Miss

Gionta: Dribbles through Goal! Crazy!!

Wisniewski: Miss

Plekanec: GOAL!!!

Jarred Friedman found this video of two Finnish friends, talking about how much they love each other.

It's a given that Scott Gomez's contract is ridiculous.

Glen Sather is the Santa Claus of the NHL – Wade Redden: $6 million – and found an elf in Bob Gainey.

But what was Gomez supposed to do? Become the first person in the history of capitalism to decline a raise?

(Detroit Tigers star Al Kaline did once, but I digress.)

Last night in L.A., we saw the skills that bedazzled Sather and Gainey.

Gomez played is best game of the season, centring the only dangerous line wearing white.

Two dominant shifts, at the beginning of the first and third periods, put the Kings back on their royal heels and set the tone for an outstanding team effort that lifted the Canadiens back into eighth place.

Equally impressive was Gomez's play in his own end. 

Never forget this is a player who broke in with the New Jersey Devils.

We saw a cum laude graduate of Lou U. last night.

Huge night for the Scott Gomez line, and a heroic effort by the D.

Tip of the tuque to video scout Jarred Friedman for this L.A. Kings commercial.

Always fun with Chris Lee, eh?

Is there a Montreal fan alive who doesn't wish the ref got a lift back to the hotel ... from Dan Heatley?

Seven minors called on each team, most of them in the second period, several of them bizarre and woefully inconsistent.

The parade to the box disrupted the flow of the game and prevented Jacques Martin from rolling the lines to the extent he was able to in Boston.

The result: Single-digit minutes for Glen Metropolit, Tom Pyatt and Mathieu Darche.

The result of that: fatigue in the third period – and two unanswered goals by the home team.

San Jose took over about midway through the middle period, and then it was just a matter of time before the number two team in the league, with a goal differential of +51, beat the number 23 team, which is -10.

Sean F. Avery

He's a jerk, but he understands show biz.

No, that guy in the Leafs jersey wasn't Mike Komisarek.

Colton Orr gave Milan Lucic all he could handle last night.

Of course, BGL couldn't fit that into his busy schedule last season.

Canadiens blow a third-period lead and waste a strong performance by Carey Price.

San Jose is a Cup contender ... and looked it.

The Canadiens are in ninth place ... and looked it during crunch time.

The San Jose Sharks sell hockey to northern Californians.

Habs I/O chief video scout Jarred Friedman found this commercial featuring Joe Thornton as a ventriloquist.

But my favourite is coach Todd McLellan.

There are others with Joe Pavelski, Rob Blake,  Ryan Clowe and Dan Boyle.

This music video is amazing.

Something to entertain Habs fans until the puck drops hours and hours from now.