Habs bounce B’s

Montreal advances with blowout of Boston

Canadiens 5, Bruins 0

NHL. Seven certainly wasn’t the Bruins’ lucky number in Montreal last night.

The Bruins pushed the heavily-favored Canadiens to a seventh game for the seventh time in their intense hockey rivalry, but simply had no legs left in a season-ending 5-0 loss at the Bell Centre.

Mike Komisarek started things off for the Habs by uncorking a slapshot that appeared to be rocketing toward the right post, but instead glanced off the blade of B’s forward Petteri Nokelainen’s stick.

The unexpected bounce off the blade allowed the puck to sneak inside the left post, and handed the hated Habs a 1-0 lead in the first period in an unfortunate bit of puck luck.

Power play specialist Mark Streit extended the Canadiens lead to 2-0 when he took a drop pass from Tom Kostopoulos, dangled through Zdeno Chara’s legs with the puck and then beat Tim Thomas with a forehand.

All in all, it was a tough night for the Captain of the Spoked B’s, as Chara finished with a minus-3, and registered only a single hit while resembling a traffic cone on skates for much of the evening.

The Bleu, Blanc and Rouge extended their advantage to 3-0 when Andrei Kostitsyn took a pass from older brother Sergei Kostitsyn, shook away from both Glen Metropolit and P.J. Axelsson, and snapped a screened wrist shot through B’s defenseman Mark Stuart’s legs that squirted past Thomas.

The B’s simply weren’t encountering fortunate bounces, but did have a handful of Grade-A opportunities in the early going that rookie netminder Carey Price deftly turned away. The kid, who has Montreal fans ready to anoint him as the next Ken Dryden or Patrick Roy, came up with four huge saves in the first period including a stunning shutdown of a Marc Savard rebound attempt. Boston’s leading scorer waited and waited for the 20-year-old netminder to drop, but Price instead stood tall for one of his 25 saves on the night.

Price stood his ground for all 60 minutes, and was again at his best in the second period when he maintained calm between the pipes and snuffed out a 2-on-1 bid by Phil Kessel and Marco Sturm.