Welcome to the 100th season, Montreal.

Jean Beliveau

Ooooh, they blew the 3-0 lead on purpose so that they could have a dramatic shootout victory at their first home game of their 100th season. I get it.

Canadiens legends Elmer Lach, 90, and Emile Bouchard, 88, two of the oldest surviving Canadiens alumni dropped the puck on the Canadiens season at the Bell Centre. They were joined by ten other Canadiens Hall of Famers: Jean Beliveau, Dickie Moore, Henri Richard, Yvan Cournoyer, Guy Lafleur, Bob Gainey, Guy Lapointe, Steve Shutt, Larry Robinson and Dick Duff. It's one of the truly nice things about Original Six teams like Montreal, they have this immense history and their former players are more than willing to come back and share.

Emile "Butch" Bouchard (#16) greets Elmer Lach (3)

The Canadiens built up a 3-0 lead by the end of the first period, with goals by Saku Koivu, Alexei Kovalev and Maxim Lapierre. But it slowly began to unravel, and silly old me thought that the Canadiens were going to blow it completely and lose. But all they wanted to do was have a thrilling finish. Ya gotta spot the other team some goals for fun, right? I mean really, what's the fun in destroying a team 6-1? (editors note: actually it's really fun, especially when it's Toronto on the wrong end of that score) Boston's David Krejci scored the first goal in the second period to get it rolling for Boston.

Carey Price had a bit of a bad bounce when he wandered behind the net. It was also extremely poor timing — there was 48 seconds remaining. As Price came to get the puck it took a strange bounce, hit the back of the net, squirted out front, and landed on the stick of Marc Savard. Price dove back at the net in a futile effort to make himself look like he tried. Savard also had the Bruins second goal of the night.



Price redeemed himself by stopping Patrice Bergeron, Phil Kessel and former teammate Michael Ryder in the shootout. And Alex Tanguay helped save the day by scoring the only goal for the Canadiens. Quebec boy does good.

Montreal has nine points of a possible ten this season. Boston continues its road to being not very good.

Alex Tanguay after scoring the shootout winner