John Forslund

And all of a sudden they come out of the cannon and score 33 seconds in.

Okay.

They're they're rested.

They're ready to go.

They're on their game, their crowds cranked up.

And then seconds later, the Canadians tied, and then it comes off the rails.

And then the hurricanes play maybe their worst hockey of the season.

And the Montreal Canadiens survive a little bit of a push in the second period.

And then I think the third period will be very interesting as we look back at this series, because that's when Montreal settled in and checked Carolina into the ice and was able to control the third period, you know, on the road again.

And it's just an amazing story of a young team who's fought through all of these hurdles to get to where they're at.

But as they wake up this morning and,

They have to be pretty confident that they survived what looked like a situation they might not be ready for, the stage of the conference final, the 2-7 game series, the fatigue that may be there, the mental fatigue.

Would they be flushed in the first game, and would they get rolled?

And they could still come back, but would that happen against them?

It didn't.

So they have to have a ton of confidence, and Carolina can say they're flushing the game and all those things.

Okay, that's fine if it's a one-off.

But I think it's fair to say based on what we saw, because now instead of speculating about all these different narratives, the beauty of the playoffs is you look at one game and you see what that one game presents, and then you go from there.

And what was presented last night was the Montreal Canadiens game plan against the Hurricanes.

And in the second game, if it works again for Marty San Luis' team, this is going to be very interesting.