The regular-season champion Canadiens face the third-placed Red Wings in the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Detroit has had the third seed clinched for weeks, and stumbled to the finish line, losing their final four games by a combined score of 17-5, while Montréal finished with four wins and a tie in their last five as they engaged in a dogfight with Toronto for the top spot. The media have tabbed Montreal as the heavy favorite, and it would be hard to argue based on their regular-season results; the Canadiens won eleven of the fourteen games between the two clubs, by an aggregate score of 51-31 . . .
A three-goal second period, two of those off the stick of fourth-line pivotman Len Lunde, set the Canadiens and the Forum crowd back onto its heels and the Red Wings coasted to a series-opening road victory. The postseason got off to a rollicking start with a fast-skating, hard-hitting (nine total hits) opening period, and there was a goal after only five minutes when Alex Delvecchio took a backhand pass from Gordie Howe out of the middle of a net-front scrum and snapped it by Jacques Plante for the early Detroit lead. That had still been the only goal, despite 24 first-period shots, when the puck dropped for period number two but that didn't last. Lunde gave DET the 2-0 edge when he scrambled home loose puck from Gerry Melnyk's shot less than three minutes into the period, and the Wings followed with two more goals in the frame as they choked the life out of the Canadiens. Lunde tallied again at 13:49 and Gordie Howe just over a minute after that, to make it a 4-0 game; perhaps the crowd took a little bit of hope from Dickie Moore's goal (in his first game in 31 days due to injury) with a minute left in the second and Bernie Geoffrion's half way through the third, but Detroit were unflustered. They more or less skated the home team to a standstill over the final twenty minutes and erased all doubt with just over three minutes left when Howe was sent in alone by Vic Stasiuk and beat Plante on the breakaway for the final score. Terry Sawchuk made 28 saves, and Howe led the way with three points, four shots, three hits and a blocked shot. Detroit 5, Montréal 2. [box] [stats]
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| Gordie Howe's three points and three hits were more than Montréal could handle |
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| Warren Godfrey hardly put a skate wrong - four assists and a +5 |
Having put themselves firmly behind the eight-ball by losing two in a row at home, and now facing the hollers of an Olympia crowd out for blood, the Canadiens put together a complete performance that saw them ground the Wings and get back one of those home defeats. A first period that would largely be played close to the vest didn't begin that way, as Don Marshall put the visitors on top in only the third minute of play. But the two clubs ground at each other for the next seventeen minutes without result, before the tempo ticked up in the second. Shots were a little easier to come by and, again, the third minute was the magic one for Montréal as Jean-Guy Talbot slapped in the rebound of Henri Richard's shot at 3:07 to put the Canadiens ahead by a pair. Jacques Plante looked to have put his Game Two nightmare behind him, knocking aside all fifteen Detroit shots in the period, and when Dickie Moore made it a 3-0 game eight minutes into the final period the lead appeared to be in safe hands. The Canadiens goalie finished with 37 saves and a shutout that his team desperately needed, while Moore and Richard did their best to kick-start the offence with a combined three points, ten shots and two hits. Not such good news for Montréal was the sight of Bernie Geoffrion in a cast at the team hotel later that evening, after having suffered what were believed to be torn ligaments in his left knee as the result of a clash along the boards late in the game. Montréal 3, Detroit 0. [box] [stats]
| Jacques Plante stopped the Wings cold 37 times |
The Red Wings again got the jump on the Boom Boom-less Canadiens, scoring three times without response in the first period, and then twice answering Montréal goals that threatened to shift the momentum to get over the line with a two-goal victory that pushed the regular-season champs to the brink of elimination. Detroit's domination of the early parts of games has been especially stark in this series, with fourteen goals in the first two periods of the four games thus far, and this evening would play to the same script. Leo Labine opened the scoring at 3:23 and then Alex Delvecchio, who had struggled to find the net late in the regular season (just two goals in the season's final fourteen games), netted twice in four minutes late in the period to make it a 3-0 Detroit game at the first intermission. But the Canadiens were still kicking, and goals from Jean-Guy Gendron and Phil Goyette in the first half of the second period made it a one-goal game and, after an eighteen-shot first period, the Wings were finding their ice crowded away by the Habs in the second. Regardless, they found a way to score - Vic Stasiuk found Plante's five-hole at 16:02 to restore the two-goal lead and the Wings still led at the second break even after Dickie Moore had scored with ninety seconds to go in the period. It wasn't much of an exaggeration to say that Montréal had twenty minutes to play to save their season and, while they held Detroit close for nineteen of those minutes, they could not find a way around Terry Sawchuk and Norm Ullman's empty-netter with fifty-one seconds left sent Les Habitants home for Game Five in desperate straits. Detroit 5, Montréal 3. [box] [stats]
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| Alex Delvecchio powered past the Canadiens for three points |
It was April Fool's Day but, with their opponents put into a tight corner and Bernie Geoffrion still in a leg cast, Detroit were hardly in the mood for joking around. Just seventy-three seconds into the game, Marcel Provonost slammed the puck past Jacques Plante after the Montréal netminder couldn't help but spill Gordie Howe's whip from the high slot. Then, only two minutes later, it was Norm Ullman again (for the fifth time in the series) lighting the lamp at the end of a Leo Labine pass and sand was quickly running out of the hourglass for the home team. Don Marshall pulled one back for the Canadiens, but Howie Glover added another for Detroit less than two minutes afterwards to make it 3-1. Late in the period, things began to get testy and four minor penalties, two on each team were whistled in the next four-and-a-half minutes of play. These infractions resulted in a barrage of four power-play goals, the two teams trading man-advantage markers back and forth until Alex Delvecchio's fifth of the series made the score 5-3 Wings at the midway point of the contest. Henri Richard cut it to a single goal going into the final period, but Montréal had been swimming upstream for too long and the time for Wings to snatch their prey for good had come. Dominating five-on-five play to the tune of 35-20 in shots on goal, Len Lunde joined the Detroit five-goal club at 2:07 to restore the two-goal spread and Bill Hicke's cross-check midway through the period was the final whimper; Allan Johnson scored Detroit's third PPG of the game to close out the Canadiens and the series, and send the Wings to the Stanley Cup Finals. Detroit 7, Montréal 4. [box] [stats]
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| Len Lunde's two goals in the clincher made five for the series |
The loss of Geoffrion hurt, certainly, but Montréal were already getting soundly outplayed by that point and the absence of their 44-goal scorer probably just hastened an inevitable demise. (You at least might have expected the return of Moore to the line-up after a long absence to balance out that loss to a large degree.) After the three-goal second period in the series opener, the Canadiens were chasing from behind the entire time; even their win in Game Three was hard-won as they surrendered 37 shots and only Plante's single bright moment of the series got them a win. In Games Four and Five, the Wings just skated Montréal off the ice in the opening period and the regular-season winners suddenly didn't seem to have any answers; and every time they tried to find one, Howe (9 points, 8 hits, +6) seemed to be everywhere. Did the season-long wrestling match with the Leafs just take too much out of the Canadiens?
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