MONTREAL — This was about 90 minutes before the puck was dropped to start the Rangers-Canadiens Eastern Conference finals Saturday afternoon.
Inside a Bell Centre interview room in the bowels of the building, Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin was conducting a pregame state-of-the-team press conference, during which you could feel the leftover euphoria in the air from Montreal’s Game 7 win over Boston three nights before.
There was humorous banter between Bergevin and reporters, about half of which was in French, as Bergevin comfortably and deftly worked the room.
Life with Les Canadiens was grand … until the game began.
The Canadiens never saw this coming. And minutes after the Rangers waxed them 7-2, they were acting as if it never happened.
“We’ve already turned the page,’’ Canadiens star defenseman P.K. Subban said. “We don’t have to watch the video because we know we were not good enough to win.’’
Canadiens coach Michel Therrien called the blowout loss “a good lesson,’’ but added, “We’ve put that game behind us. We’re going to move forward.’’
So selective amnesia was the Canadiens’ play in the postgame. It might prove to be the best play they made all day.
We’ll see if it turns out to be more effective than the way they played late in the second period Saturday, when they allowed the Rangers to become a runaway train — turning a tight 2-1 lead into 4-1 in a span of 49 seconds just before the end of the period.
When the horn sounded to end the second period, it might as well have sounded for the game, because the Canadiens were so done that Therrien lifted his Olympic-champion goalie Carey Price for the third period to “protect’’ him from how poorly the rest of the team was playing in front of him.
The Rangers ambushed Price, who had been a nemesis of theirs, with two goals in the first 6:27. That represented twice their total scoring output on Price in their previous two games against Montreal.
Later, Rangers winger Chris Kreider blasted into Price so violently it dislodged his goal net on a second-period scoring chance gone awry, appearing to bang into Price’s right knee.
“I think it was accidental, honestly,’’ Therrien said. “The fact [Price] didn’t play in the third period was more to protect him than anything, because we were not sharp in front of him.”
The Canadiens were not sharp at many, if any, times Saturday. Certainly a lot of that had to do with the Rangers and how fluidly they played, though there was some sentiment in the Canadiens’ locker room that the loss was more about their failings rather than the Rangers’ prowess.
“It wasn’t what they were doing; it was what we weren’t doing,” Canadiens winger Brian Gionta said through clenched teeth, sounding like he was talking himself into that theory.
“We were not ready mentally,’’ Therrien said. “Physically, we were not ready to compete for a game like that. We didn’t play our game, that is the most important thing. We didn’t give ourselves a chance to win this hockey game. So we’re going to regroup and make sure next game that we’re going to compete a lot harder and be more alert.”
There were differing opinions on whether the Canadiens were hungover from their Wednesday night Game 7 win in Boston.
“Everyone is going to be talking about that but we are professionals; we know how good a team the Rangers are,” Subban said.
“That had nothing to do with it,” Gionta said.
But Canadiens winger Rene Bourque said, “We got a little emotional letdown after the Boston series.”
Whatever it was, the Rangers were better Saturday afternoon. A lot better.
“Give them credit,’’ Subban said. “They were hungry and they executed. [But] we know we can be better than that. We’ll be ready for the next game. … There’s no panic in this room.”
Therrien, who seemed to be the most honest about what happened to his team Saturday, said the loss “brought us back to earth.”
Therrien was standing at that same podium that Bergevin, his general manager, had stood just four hours earlier during that feel-good pre-game press conference, and yet the mood in the room was so palpably different, with euphoria having been replaced by shell shock and denial.