Battle of Quebec - Round 1 of 4

[The Deer]

One of the fiercest rivalries in the NHL was rekindled tonight as the Quebec Nordiques visited the Montreal Forum for their first of four games this season against the Montreal Canadiens. It was an awesome game, very well-played, and Montreal used a late third period comeback to secure a 5-3 win.

The first period was played almost to perfection- great passing, awesome hitting, and perfect goaltending. Scoreless after one.

Quebec led 2-1 after two periods as Mats Sundin notched a pair, and early in the third period, Joe Sakic was the trailer on a nice passing play and the Nordiques assumed a 3-1 lead to quiet the raucous Forum faithful. It looked as though this would be Quebec's game, but Stephan Lebeau one-timed one home right away to cut it to 3-2. A tight finish seemed on the horizon.

Until Stephane Lebeau got a partial breakaway with about 1:40-something left in the game. I really could have waited a second, activated my D, and had him accelerate back to perhaps catch him in time, but for some reason I turned my brain off for a second and just hit him right away from behind. DUMB move, easy penalty shot Montreal, and despite every effort to convince myself that I could stop it, I knew he was scoring. 3-3 game.

Quebec never really recovered from that penalty shot screwup. With just over a minute left, Montreal's Denis Savard fought his way past a couple of Nord defenders and goaltender Ron Hextall to beat them all to a loose puck off of an innocent-looking initial shot, and trickled home the rebound tantalizingly slowly. 4-3 Montreal and Quebec was really deflated. They hardly got possession of the puck after that, and with about 30 seconds left, Lebeau scored again to ice it.

Awesome game, extremely tight, you had to make almost a perfect play to score............ you had to be one or two moves ahead of the other guy to even get a good chance. Always enjoy playing shakazuzu, the intensity is always there because you know you have to play your best against him if you want to win. In fact, tonight I brought pretty much my best for 13 out of 15 minutes, and still lost.

Great game Montreal and I look forward to our three critical matchups next month! They could have a lot of impact on who ends up winning the Adams Division.