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MONTREAL — Whose dream is this, anyway?
Pick a number.
Start with the obvious, No. 31 in the Montreal goal, a 20-year-old rookie sensation from Vancouver who has the Zamboni resurface his veins between periods. Carey Price has taken the Montreal Canadiens into the second round in his pursuit of repeating what another untried youngster managed 37 years ago, when Ken Dryden came out of nowhere to steal a Stanley Cup.
Now look at the other end of the ice: No. 43 for the Philadelphia Flyers, a journeyman backup given his first chance, a man who has been to the finals and the semi-finals with another team – but never left the bench. No longer the perennial backup, 30-year-old Martin Biron has just come out of a series against Washington Capitals where he played his first playoff game, had his first shutout, won his first overtime and has now moved on, for the first time, to the next round.
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“I hope to keep going,” Biron says.
He will hope and more following last night's 4-3 overtime victory by the Canadiens.
It was a game even the hero – overtime scorer Tom Kostopoulos – called “weird” at times, but all that mattered is the results and all that matters now is what comes next.
But if you want motivation for tomorrow's Game 2, look to Biron and his team. The easygoing Biron has a very personal reason for wanting to whip the Canadiens. As a youngster growing up in Lac St-Charles, he worshipped the nearby Quebec Nordiques – in the years before the team moved to Colorado – to the point where he would paint his face the team colours, white and blue, during playoff matches and show up at the airport to welcome his heroes home, often in defeat from the hands of the dreaded Canadiens.
“A lot of that rivalry, that history,” he says, “is still implanted inside me.
“Finally, I will live out that Quebec-Montreal rivalry.”
You want further motivation for Montreal to continue winning, just look to Price and his team. He has the likes of Dryden and Patrick Roy, two Hall-of-Fame goaltenders, to emulate. And the Canadiens are chasing their 25th Stanley Cup. They are the only Canadian team left in the playoffs. In the previous three playoff finals, the Ottawa Senators, the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames, all came up short. If the Cup were to come home to Canada for the first time since 1993, who better to do it than the team that last accomplished the feat?
But there is more, so much more. Montreal's Alexei Kovalev, No. 27, branded an underachiever last year, is still out to prove that, at 35, it is possible for a proud hockey player to recreate himself.
This night he did, scoring twice – including the tying goal with 29 seconds left that made the overtime victory possible.
“Alex,” says winning coach Guy Carbonneau, “has been a joy this year.”
On the opposite side, we have No. 48, Daniel Brière, the little francophone star who, many believe, snubbed Montreal this past summer and chose, instead, to sign an eight-year $52-million contract with the Flyers when all of Quebec wanted the Gatineau native in bleu, blanc et rouge.
Brière they boo every time he touches the puck, in part for the perceived snub, in part because it was little Brière who, back in February, took the game puck that might otherwise have gone to Price to mark his very first NHL shutout and flipped it into the crowd.
The thunderous boos, Brière says, he takes as a compliment.
Besides, he adds, “The playoffs aren't about Danny Brière. They're about Montreal and the Flyers and moving to the next round.”
They are indeed about these two teams. The Canadiens defeated the Flyers four games to none in the regular season, but the Flyers say they have changed from a team that tries to score each shift to one that waits, and pounces.
“It was hard to find the game,” Kovalev said when it was over. “We didn't know what to expect.”
What is certain to be next is an increase in intensity. Battles in the past between these two long-time rivals have been bitter and often ugly. Larry Robinson against Dave Schultz. Goalie Ron Hextall tackling Chris Chelios.
The story of previous playoff series between the two teams is, at times, a tale of bench-clearing brawls, player suspensions and fines.
In 1976, after the Canadiens put an end to the Flyers' great run of success as the Broad Street Bullies, Montreal's Serge Savard said he hoped the Habs had “put an end to all the crap they stand for.”
This is not a pleasant relationship, just in case you were beginning to wonder. And it is certainly not going to improve in the short term.
But only one dream can come true at a time.
Last night belonged to Kostopoulos and Kovalev and, of course, Carey Price.
The beauty of best-four-out-of-seven, however, is everyone gets to dream again – for a while.
But no matter what becomes of all this, a Game 1 that features the tying goal scored with the goalie out and the winning goal in overtime usually means a dream series for fans.
