They’ve been to OT against each other in two of the last three openers, while the other Leafs win was a 2-1 game. This was opening night at the Bell Centre, after all, so a fired-up Habs team should’ve been the expectation, not a cakewalk.
Additionally, Martin St. Louis (15-19-4 as MTL head coach) nudged a number of the Habs’ underlying performance metrics toward the middle of the pack after taking over the bench last season, livening up their offense some and making them a more dangerous team in transition.
Unfortunately for the Leafs, they often fed into that Montreal transition game with sloppy puck management throughout the night, leading Sheldon Keefe to put his foot down already with a strong reprimand just 60 minutes into the new season:
Sheldon Keefe after an ugly loss to Montreal in the season opener: "As experienced a team as we are, that is unacceptable… We deserved to lose.