Mere minutes into Saturday night’s tilt, it was clear that one of the teams on the Bell Centre ice played the game in a way that was very familiar to most of the Habs fans watching. Minimal forechecking, passively giving up the defensive blue line time and time again, uncontrolled zone exits, forwards flying the zone prematurely — these were all things that the fans of Les Glorieux had become accustomed to over the past half decade or so.
Only this time, the culprits were wearing orange.
Staring at their old selves across the neutral zone, the current Canadiens put on a masterclass demonstration of how to break their former system.