Habs Defeat Maple Leafs

The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-1 on Saturday to close out their season, by doing so, the Habs force the Pittsburgh Penguins to win on Sunday to take the conference crown.

The scoring for the Habs went like this Mark Streit, from Alex Kovalev, and Tomas Plekanec, next from Christopher Higgins, assisted by Streit, and Ryan O’Byrne, and lastly from Higgins, assisted by Brian Smolinski, and Andrei Markov. Carey Price played well again stopping 26 shots for the win. The lone scorer for the Leafs was Mark Bell, assisted by Kris Newbury, and Jason Blake. Andrew Raycroft made some excellent saves to keep the Leafs in it.

The Habs played another sound game, they scored when they had to, and played well defensively, but they didn’t play that hard as they were more than likely trying to stave off injuries leading into the play-offs.

By defeating the Leafs, the Habs obtained another two points, which puts them at 104 for the season, pushing the Penguins to win today to claim the conference crown. Alex Kovalev took the Molson Cup for the year for the Habs, and Mark Streit was honored with the Jacques Beauchamp trophy.

Regardless of the outcome of today’s Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers match-up, the Habs will face the Boston Bruins in the first round of the post season, a team which the Habs won the season series 8-0. Some would say that meeting the Bruins in the first round is good, but like everyone knows, the post season is a different season, it’s not because the Habs beat the Bruins in eight straight this year, that it will be an easy task, the Bruins will have something to prove to the Habs.

The post season starts next week, for the Habs either Wednesday, or Thursday, giving them 4-5 days of recuperation time for players to heal their bumps, and bruises, and giving more time for Mike Komisarek to completely heal.

Saku Koivu will be re-evaluated on Tuesday, to see if the Habs can find a way for Koivu to play. For the Habs sake let’s hope so as Koivu has been the Canadiens best player in the play-offs when they were in the post season.

The season is over, and from being forecasted to finish tenth in the conference, it’s a great season at 47 wins, and 104 points. Bravo!