Montreal Canadiens Cinderella Story: Which Loss is More Embarassing
By Joshua Rosa
The Montreal Canadiens are the Kings of the North. Try not to smile while saying that. Its impossible, and its great. Everyone loves the underdogs and that is what Montreal has been since the playoffs began. No one picked Montreal to make it out of the first round, then nobody picked them to make it out of the second round. Look at where we are now.
There is a side to Cinderella stories that people rarely talk about, and that is the other team. For every Air Bud, there is 3 or 4 teams that lost to a team that had a dog on it. Now, Montreal is not Air Bud, but hearing how certain people were talking, like Craig Button, they may as well have been. Every single Cinderella story has to have a couple ugly stepsisters, and Toronto and Winnipeg are those.
Toronto was unanimously the favourites in round 1, but ended up bowing out to Montreal in 7 games. The outlook for the second round series against the Jets was a bit more positive, as in Montreal would probably not get swept, but many pundits still picked Winnipeg to move on. We all know how that one turned out.
The thing about looking at the surface is that it does not show quite how bad and embarrassing both of these losses were.
Toronto was the heavy favourites, and after losing the first game, won the next three to take a commanding 3-1 series lead. Then, Montreal won the next two games in overtime to force a game 7, which Montreal won comfortably.
Winnipeg was swept, but this wasn’t like the sweep that Winnipeg administered to Edmonton last round. Oh no. Those games were close, with three games being decided in overtime. Winnipeg never even got a lead against Montreal and lost the deciding game 4 taking only 16 shots in the entire game.
An interesting fact is that both Toronto and Winnipeg lost one of their most important centres, John Tavares and Mark Scheifele, although it was under very different circumstances. Tavares was injured in a freak accident, while Scheifele was suspended for a terrible dirty hit on Jake Evans. Both teams lost top defencemen, Jake Muzzin and Dylan DeMelo, but Winnipeg was without DeMelo’s services for longer.
Toronto has the history on their side, but Winnipeg’s loss was truly pathetic and hard to watch. So, which one is worse? Who should be the most ashamed?