For two periods at the Bell Centre on Saturday night, the legendary Canadiens-Maple Leafs rivalry was enough to make any hockey fan feel sick.

The Canadiens had a flu epidemic going through the room and captain Shea Weber on the shelf. The Leafs were missing their goaltender and a couple of key defencemen and their vaunted offence hissed and sputtered like a string of wet firecrackers.

Heading into the third period, it was like watching the Canadiens and the New Jersey Devils play on a Tuesday night around 2001, when the only sensible thing to do was to find a bar where the liquor was cheap and they weren’t showing the game.

Then the third period started. The Canadiens had a scoring chance, the Leafs counter-attacked. John Tavares scored. 1-0 Leafs. Game on.

Tavares scored one minute and six seconds into the period. At the end of the frame, shots for the period stood at Canadiens 16, Leafs 1. Throw in the overtime session and the Leafs were outshot 19-2 when it mattered most.

Yet when it was over, newbie Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe would say “we let them hang around.” It was a stunning bit of arrogance on the part of Young Sheldon. The Leafs didn’t let the Canadiens do anything. The Habs simply did it, Toronto be damned.

Leading the way was Ilya Kovalchuk — always dangerous, always a threat to score. When he’s on the ice, the eye follows No. 17 the way a moth trails a flame. Kovalchuk carved out three or four chances in the third period. With a bit of luck or a little less Jack Campbell in the Toronto net, the game might have ended in regulation.

It was left to local hero Marco Scandella to tie it at 1-1 with time winding down. Then it was overtime and there was the brilliant and shifty Nick Suzuki bearing down on the Leafs goal, with Toronto star Auston Matthews labouring in his wake. Campbell made the save on Suzuki, but with Matthews paying no attention Kovalchuk sailed past him and pounced on the rebound.

Goal! And another of those Kovalchuk celebrations that have become a stamp of his brief tenure in Montreal. Think about it: the man hasn’t even had time to unpack and he already has two overtime winners and a shootout winner for the Canadiens. For a banged-up, ailing team, the big Russian has been the perfect cure-all.

If you want to know what effect Kovalchuk has had on the hockey-mad fans in this city, check the three-star selection. When Carey Price was announced as the game’s first star and Kovalchuk was ignored altogether, Price was greeted with some groans from the cheap seats.

For this one night, Price, a guy who has won the Molson Cup for 4,617 successive months and is worshipped this side of idolatry by the Montreal mob, was no longer the favourite. The fans wanted Kovalchuk to win that first star and they wanted him bad.

Mind you, Price put in a solid body of work on the evening, as did Campbell at the other end. As always when you’re winning, there were plenty of others: Jeff Petry stepping boldly into the Weber role as he always seems to do, Max Domi finding some fire, Nate Thompson killing penalties, Tomas Tatar making it all but impossible to offer him on the trade market.

When it was over, the Canadiens had their third win over the mighty Leafs in as many meetings this season, and the excuses were flowing out of Hogtown almost before Kovalchuk’s shot was in the net: back-to-back games, backup goaltenders, blah-blah-blah.

This is something Toronto has to learn, from the upper brass to the broadcast crews, the fan base, the players and Young Sheldon himself: teams are not going to simply step back and let you win because you signed a bunch of high-priced offensive talent. You’re going to have to fight and scratch and claw for every point — and efforts like Matthews’s half-hearted overtime backcheck are not going to get it done.

The Leafs are a very talented, but flawed team. The Canadiens are a somewhat talented, but flawed team. They’re more talented with Kovalchuk on the roster and Jonathan Drouin back on the ice, but they have some of the same holes, like backup goaltender.

Where the Canadiens have the edge is in sheer grit. If you must give an inch, as the great Red Fisher used to say, make sure it’s only an inch. This team has fought through a wave of injuries to key forwards followed by a flu epidemic. They’ve been counted out a dozen times already and yet here they are, still on the outside looking in but firmly in the rear-view mirror of teams like the Leafs and the Panthers.

The Canadiens may not get there. The odds are still against them. But with big No. 17 leading the way, they’ve been able to light up February in Montreal, which is no mean feat. By now, we can assume Marc Bergevin has got the message that Kovalchuk himself appeared to hurl to the rafters after that overtime goal:

Sign the man.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

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