Heeding the Call Against Montreal

The Montreal Canadiens/Washington Capitals series should have been a much shorter series. We go back to Game 2 of that series. The Canadiens are beating the PISS out of the Capitals 4-1 when the comeback begins. With the Capitals fully in control of the momentum, rather than try to stay the rabid crowd and try to quiet them, Scott Gomez does this during a scrum after a play.



Gomez has two career fights, and prior to this his last one was a decade ago. Those stats come as absolutely no surprise what so ever in terms of EVERYTHING that has to do with fighting. While not nearly as bad as Carcillo dropping the gloves with Max Talbot last season, this has got to rank up there. In terms of timing it could have not been a worse time to fight.

I don't know who is going to protect the Canadiens if push comes to shove in this series. We've all seen what the Penguins can do to hot goalies in order to get them off their game. It ain't just peppering them with shots and goals either:



Ouch. Game Two though, huh? Wonder what happened the rest of that series...

The Penguins are not the Washington Capitals. They are nasty, they have bastards on their forecheck, and their star Russian doesn't choke. The Canadiens are going to need more than Scott fucking Gomez to protect their on fire goaltender.

The Montreal Canadiens only had 32 fights during the regular season. Ryan O'Byrne (who only played in 4 of the 7 games in Round 1), leads the Canadiens with 6 fights. He is followed by Montreal's response to Fuck Yeah! Craig Adams! in Travis Moen (5) and then Georges Laraque (4) whom I still sometimes forget actually played hockey this season.

I'm going to go boldly out on a limb and know my boys can step up for me: the Montreal Canadiens cannot match the toughness that the Pittsburgh Penguins will bring to the table. Who is going to drop the gloves when the Penguins run Jaroslav Halak? Jaroslav Spacek? Andrei Markov? Hal Gill? Those boys will be too busy crumbling from hard checks from Kunitz, Cooke, and Adams, as well as others, to be too ready to throw themselves on the sword for Halak as is. And when they DO fight? Well...



Oh...Hal. Montreal clearly doesn't know when is a good time to fight, as evidenced by Scott Gomez, and when they DO fight, who is going to strike terror into your heart in that lineup? Seriously, who are YOU more afraid of? Mike Rupp or Ryan O'Byrne?

So, with this TERROR of a team facing off against us, I'm sure Mike Rupp, Chris Kunitz, Max Talbot, Matt Cooke, and all our other bastards will be SHAKING in their skates when considering getting a little rough with Jaroslav Halak.

Or, they won't, at all.