Todd: Canadiens’ Slafsquatch leaves giant footprints in Tampa
The Tampa crowd was loud and proud, ready to rock and roll, to watch their playoff-hardened Lightning whup the bejeepers out of the adolescent Canadiens.
With help from some skewed officiating, things were going pretty much according to plan — until Juraj Slafkovsky crashed the party.
For the fans in Tampa Bay, it was like having Kash Patel show up at your barbecue with a two-four under his arm.
One. Two. Three. that stood this series on end: Suddenly, it’s the Canadiens with momentum and home-ice advantage in a series in which they were underdogs despite a strong regular season.
Just like that, the big Slovakian went from large to legend. Canadiens fan Susie Q. put it best with her post on Bluesky: “SLAF IS A MOTHER BLEEPING BEAUTY.”
This being a family newspaper, we’ll let you fill in the bleep.
In the wake of the hat trick, the nicknames are multiplying like rabbits. Our old friend Denis Fournier came up with Slafsquatch a good while ago, a strong contender backed by a list as long as Slafkovsky’s stick.
Slaftrick.
Slafzilla.
Slafshot.
Slapshotsky.
Slafdaddy.
Slafgoalsky.
Slafgodsky.
Hatkovsky.
Slafs All Folks.
The multiplying nicknames are funny, but they’re also an indication of something much more profound. The Canadiens have been looking for a superstar skater since forever. They’ve come close a few times, but from Alexei Kovalev through P.K. Subban and Max Pacioretty, it didn’t work out for one reason or another.
Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, they have a bunch: Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov, Lane Hutson and Slafkovsky. As much as Caufield was the star of the season with his 51-goal campaign, Slafkovsky’s emergence as a 30-goal, 73-point power forward at age 22 parallels Peter Mahovlich’s emergence during the 1970s — but in considerably less time.
More significantly, the Canadiens made a simple, two-word statement Sunday night: “We’ve arrived.” Up against a big, experienced Washington Capitals team a year ago, they were clearly not ready for prime time. Against another big, experienced team Sunday, they were able to hold their own, shake off an avalanche of early misfortune in the form of questionable penalties and a disallowed Josh Anderson goal, and come back (as they have all season) for the win.
Yes, they’ve earned nothing at this point except confidence and self-respect, but they’ve already won as many games as the Stanley Cup finalists of 2021 were able to win against Andrei Vasilevskiy. These two teams are evenly matched and it could break either way, but I’m sticking with my pre-series prediction that the Canadiens would win it in six games.
Martin St. Louis, meanwhile, will be reminding his players how easily it could have gone the other way.
The Lightning were well on their way to locking it down when Conor Geekie took the mother of all dumb penalties with 1:28 left in the second period — charging at all-world Canadiens defenceman Hutson and cross-checking him in the face. Tampa’s lead at that point was only 2-1, but the shots on goal were 16-5 and Montreal was having trouble mustering anything resembling an attack on Vasilevskiy’s net.
Then stupidity struck. The Bolts clearly had a plan to attempt to run Hutson at every opportunity. That was obvious in their last regular-season meeting when Corey Perry chased Hutson all over the ice. The result on that occasion and again in Game 1 was the same: a stupid, self-inflicted loss.
“We took four offensive-zone penalties,” coach Jon Cooper said. “That wasn’t over-aggression. That was stupidity. This is the Stanley Cup playoffs. This isn’t game 62. That’s extremely disappointing.”
Cooper surely embellished that with a few F-bombs when he talked to his team, especially after Jake Guentzel’s hold-my-beer moment when he attempted to top Geekie’s stupidity seizure with one of his own.
Geekie is 21 and a virtual rookie — Guentzel, my fellow Nebraskan, has seemingly been around since sticks were made of wood. That didn’t keep him from swinging his stick at Kaiden Guhle’s head just as it appeared the teams were headed for 5-on-5 overtime, handing Slafsquatch and his teammates exactly what they needed: a power play.
The result was predictable. We haven’t yet checked with the Forum ghosts to see whether they will join this party, but we have it on higher authority that God Herself is on the side of the Habs.
First, folks down Tampa way have been going out of their way to insult Pope Leo XIV. Second, at the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-l’Évangéliste in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu Sunday evening, a large screen was set up so that parishioners could watch the game from their pews, thus celebrating Quebec’s second religion:
The Habs, baby. The Habs.
Heroes: Juraj Slafkovsky, Juraj Slafkovsky, Juraj Slafkovsky, Josh Anderson, Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson, Kaiden Guhle, Mike Matheson, Jakub Dobes, Nicole Gosling, Gabriela Dabrowski &&&& last but not least, Martin St. Louis.
Zeros: Corey Perry, Conor Geekie, Jake Guentzel, Keith Pelley, MLSE, Auston Matthews, Brady Tkachuk, LIV Golf, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu &&&& last but not least, David Samson and Jeffrey Loria.
Now and forever.
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