Habs live on

I think I put out thirty or forty tweets during last night's Habs/Rangers game.  It was tied at one when I turned it on, with Montreal having scored early on a power play, and the Rangers tying it up (very shortly before I turned it on, I think) on a pretty weak goal later.

And it was all Canadiens for quite a while after that.  Plekanec scored on a wickedly deceptive wrister between two defenders very shortly after I turned it on.  That actually closed out the scoring in the first, but there were a number of good chances (one or two for the Rangers, and several for the Habs).

In the second, it seemed to all go Montreal's way.  Pacioretty scored off a very nice feed from Gallagher, putting it between Hank's legs and over his stick.  Then Bourque scored his first of the night when he found himself five or ten feet from the net with a lot of time and he found the top of the net.

That got the King pulled (and came close to getting me to turn the game off), which somehow sparked the Rangers to come back with three goals of their own over the next seven minutes and change.  One was a lucky deflection off a defender, and the other two were not-good save attempts by Tokarski.

Montreal didn't lose heart, however, scoring to re-take the lead only a minute later as Bourque got his second.  Despite the Rangers taking a penalty a couple minutes later, that ended the scoring in the second.

The third period was almost all Canadiens, as Tokarski was able to stop the few chances the Rangers got (and a couple of them were amazingly close).  Really, the biggest bright spot for New York was that they got more shots in defending a major penalty than the Habs did.

Montreal did get two more goals of their own, though, which was more than enough to seal the game.  I'm still trying to figure out why Talbot was on the bench, leading to an empty net goal, with more than four minutes left.  I'd looked away before that, alas.

Anyway, that did it for the game, giving Montreal another gasp of life, which comes tomorrow in New York.  We'll see if they can do it again; I'm not holding my breath.  I think they got all their lucky bounces last night.  But who knows?