If the Canadian won match number five in Washington, Montreal will win the series.
If you are capital fans, I tell you: don’t let the Canadian win the next match.
I cannot predict the future and I resigned myself to accepting that I was not suffering from giftedness. So your opinion is worth as much as mine for the rest of this series.
On the other hand, what we can do is take a leap in the past to remember what happened the last time the Canadian was exactly in this situation.
Remember what was the collective mood. What was the level of hope.
It was obviously in 2021, during the pandemic.
Everything was dark
Montreal lost 3 to 1 in the first round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, after a bitter 4-0 setbacks in the Bell Center.
JDM
Alex Galchenyuk, with three points, and Jason Spezza, with two, had been the stars of the match.
The Leafian goalkeeper, Jack Campbell, was so easy that he had no star despite a laundering.
After four games in the series, the Canadian totaled four goals and William Nylander had as much. It was not chic. Cole Caufield had watched two tarraded games, eating popcorn.
Jake Evans and Artturi Lehkonen were injured. Brandon Gallagher played with one hand and had missed part of the fourth game.
Nobody believed in it
No one believed a second that the Canadian had a chance to come back.
In our pages, we pointed out that “there is no need to be optimistic”.
That CH had been “simply awful” and that the club was “not proud to compete” against Toronto.
JDM
It is necessary to go where it hurts and stop launching on the outskirts, underlined at the time my colleague Jonathan Bernier, who even mentioned that the attendants of the leafs were going to need cleanser to remove the washer spots on the maple leaf in the center of the belly of the Toronto goalkeeper.
My former colleague Réjean Tremblay had not gone there with the back of the spoon of the dead hand by writing that it was “to play idiot” to have tried to be a supporter of CH in series.
He even tried Captain Shea Weber, evoking that he was not the kind of man capable of enthusiasting young teammates or even pushing veterans to play with emotion.
Jean-Charles Lajoie predicted the end of the series in match five or otherwise 48 hours later, speaking of a “group of dislocated players”.
If I had written something in 2021, it would surely have been in the same direction as my colleagues. Nothing was going. Nothing allowed to believe that the wind could turn.
Why not yet?
And we all know what happened. A big goal from Nick Suzuki in overtime in Toronto, and CH was back.
“Victory against the whole planet!” Stepred my colleague Marc de Foy brilliantly.
Because yes, CH had closed the Yeule to everyone.
Like this year. CH has deceived most of the world. Whenever we no longer believed in it, it looks like only they believed in it.
Why would it be so different this time?
This is why I think it can still be that CH closes it to us, the yeule. In addition, everything is not bad less dark than 2021 after four games.
That while we are brewing on the arbitration and the rudeness of the villain Tom Wilson, Martin St-Louis and his gang are finding solutions to be better. Because 12 shots on goal at five against five, it is not Vargeux.
And if CH wins in Washington, be careful. The beautiful madness will leave. The bipolar fanatic needle of the CH will change its edge and the Bell center will break all the records in the number of decibels for a hockey match.
After that, it’s a seven match where, you know, anything can happen.
Pedro Martinez
For baseball fans, you guessed, my narrative is inspired by the legendary remarks of the Red Sox player of Boston Kevin Millar, when his club lost 3 to 0 in the series against the Yankees, in 2004.
Millar had started to say to everyone: “Don’t let us win tonight!” He added that Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling were going to be the launchers for the following two games and that in match seven, anything can happen.
You know more.
In short, do not leave CH winning the match five in Washington.
