Canadiens made a massive mistake by giving Capitals bulletin board material

The Washington Capitals are a team that the Montreal Canadiens can upset in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Capitals were one of the league's best teams for the first half, but they got caught up in the Alex Ovechkin goal chase over the final few months and didn't finish with much team success. With their poor stretch, they relinquished the Presidents' Trophy and now enter the playoffs without much momentum.

The Canadiens, on the other hand, have all the momentum after their epic run to the second wild-card spot. They stumbled into the playoffs after numerous failed chances to clinch a spot, but that was part of the growing-up process for the young team. Now that it's time for them to take on a seven-game series, there could be some more growing pains coming, and the last thing they want to do is give the Capitals extra motivation.

Ivan Demidov and Patrik Laine didn't get the memo to let sleeping dogs lie. The last thing the Canadiens want is an Alex Ovechkin with a fire lit underneath him, and Demidov and Laine's comments might ignite something. Their comments weren't the most pointed we've ever heard in a locker room press scrum, but it might've been a time when they wanted to be more vanilla with their answer.

An obvious storyline with this series is the new Russian star facing the old star in his first playoff series. Demidov made some waves when Roman Rotenberg revealed he wanted to come to Montreal this year to face Ovechkin. However, after Demidov's comments on Saturday, we might know now that it wasn't because Ovechkin was his favorite player growing up.

The comparisons are easy to make between Ovechkin and Laine. They are two players that might not give 100% on every shift at five on five but you can trust them to sit on top of the left circle and fire home shots on the powerplay with ease. It's also easy to assume Laine paid close attention to Ovechkin's goal record, but according to Laine on Saturday, that is the last thing on his mind.

If you look at it one way, you could say it's a good thing that the young Habs are focusing on the task at hand and not getting caught up in everything else surrounding this series. If Laine and Demidov go out in this series and prove they truly don't care about all the noise and are X-Factors to an upset victory then all this bulletin board material will be all forgotten. However, the last thing any Canadiens fan wants is for these comments to just be empty claims.