ShareThisMONTREAL -- In four days, an awful lot had changed.From manifest destiny to minor unease last Thursday, to a full-on gut wrenching, bar-clearing funk on Saturday, to the familiar seventh-game mix of hope and dread Monday night.It's a different hockey crowd here than it used to be. Louder. Needier. Not nearly so cocksure. Fifteen years of walking in the wilderness will do that to you.So will having the full, undivided focus of a city, of a province and of a pays, of being the obsessive and only subject of an entire sports-media subgenre.In all-Habs-all-the-time Montreal, this season has been the happiest of surprises. The Bob Gainey master plan was far ahead of schedule. What was supposed to be a life-and-death struggle just to make the playoffs morphed into a spot atop the Eastern Conference, and an apparently insurmountable first-round lead on the Boston Bruins.Human nature being what it is, they started to count their chickens -- not just the fans, but the players as well, who all too obviously relaxed after squeaking by in the fourth game -- and then over the course of the weekend, learned an ancient lesson.Truth was, aside from the series opener, the Bruins had played them dead even or better for every minute of the series, often outworked them, outskated them and outcoached them. Then came the decider, and no one who was being honest could have walked into the building Monday night thinking it was in the bag.A bit boorish to chant "Go, Habs, go!" and almost drown out The Star-Spangled Banner, but that's the kind of thing you do when you're a little scared and a little desperate, when you're trying to will something to happen, and the rules of decorum go out the window.In the first period, with the Bruins still feeling their oats, a couple of important things happened for the Canadiens: Alex Kovalev, not so good since his goal-for-the-ages in the fifth game, made a beautiful pass to set up Mike Komisarek's opening score and Carey Price, who had given up 10 goals in the two previous games and whose third-period meltdown in the fifth game had really set off the crisis of confidence, discouraged Boston by making a bunch of those in-absolutely-the-right-place-at-the-right-time saves that have already become his trademark. (Inspiring, in some sacrilegious sections of the Bell Center, a new chant -- "Jesus Price, Jesus Price.")"A couple of ups, a few downs and an up again," was how Price afterward described his first NHL playoff series.The home team was hardly full value for taking a 1-0 lead into the first intermission, but it turned out that was all that was required. In the second period, for the first time in a while, you could see what all of the fuss this season had been about. There was high-speed, high-flying magic from the Kovalev-Saku Koivu-Christopher Higgins trio. Montreal was no longer being outworked, outmuscled and outskated. They were winning most of the little battles.Somewhere right about the game's halfway point, when Mark Streit scored a beauty to make the score 2-0, followed by a long television timeout during which the crowd never stopped cheering, the Bruins surrendered, not without a fight, not dishonorably and not without making the most of their limited resources. Just giving in to the inevitable. In the final period, even a string of power-play chances couldn't restart their heart.You can imagine how it sounded in the rink during those final minutes of the third period, the Habs piling it on, up 5-0, the "Na, na, na, na, na hey, hey, goodbyes" ringing in the rafters.And sitting there, you could anticipate how it would be outside.Here in Montreal, they used to make fun of Toronto hockey fans hereabouts for the way they celebrated any kind of playoff triumph, for staging premature victory celebrations because for so long they hadn't experienced the real thing. The sports equivalent of calling in the army to clean up a little snow.But that was only one round of the necessary four that ended Monday night. That was a one seed beating an eight seed, going seven games when a whole lot of smart folks figured it would take only four or five.And heck, maybe it's just geezerism creeping in, but those kids on the street were making an awful racket. It sure sounded like a party.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Canadiens turn dread into cheers
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