Episode five of the Crave documentary The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens dropped on the platform on Thursday. While the episode’s primary focus is on the Habs’ chase of a playoff spot, that’s not what stuck with us the most.

This fifth installment starts with alternate captain Brendan Gallagher losing his mother to cancer and the team’s reaction to this trying time. I was shocked to see the cameras go as far as filming Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton when they called Gallagher to extend their sympathies. The Edmonton, Alberta native has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and this tragedy is no exception. You can hear the pain in the 33-year-old’s voice as he talks to his bosses. Hughes tells him that he can take some time to deal with it, but that’s not the way Gallagher operates.

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He explained to the camera that Nick Suzuki and Jake Evans found out and came up to his hotel room [the team was on a Western road trip], but Gallagher, being the warrior that he is, just wanted to keep going and play hockey. That’s his safe place, the one place where he doesn’t have to think about anything and play.

As reported at the time, the Habs players all visited the Gallagher family home to express their sympathies and support their teammate. This is an excellent example of just how tight-knit this Canadiens’ side has become. Of course, we also see Gallagher score a goal against the Ottawa Senators and look up to the heavens, because as he puts it, it was the first time she was seeing it from up there. Gorton then asks how Gallagher’s reaction to adversity could not inspire anyone.

As the Canadiens struggle to book a playoff spot, repeatedly failing to clinch their participation, we see Ivan Demidov’s arrival with the Habs. Gorton says it feels like a gift from St. Petersburg that they would allow him to do this, even though he had a contract running till the end of May.

The episode shows Demidov explaining that he appreciated fans turning up to welcome him at Pearson’s International Airport before showing us his debut against the Chicago Blackhawks. For those who were in attendance, you can actually feel the atmosphere just like it was on that night. The fans, the team, and even the media were excited for the young Russian’s arrival, and boy did he deliver with a goal and an assist after just 14 minutes of play.

While members of the media usually are pretty relaxed in the press gallery, when Demidov found the back of the net, I can confirm that cheers resonated up there. Still, no one could hear them, given the fact that over 21,000 fans made the building absolutely erupt.

The episode then focuses on the very last game of the season, where the Canadiens finally clinched their playoff ticket. Although we don’t see the end of the game, it seems they’ve decided to save that for the sixth and final episode of this second season.

In all honesty, this was perhaps the best episode of this season so far, likely due to its emotional intensity, which combined great sadness with excitement and nervousness. It makes you feel for Gallagher, but also reminds you of how tense things got last season when the team seemed unable to rise to the occasion and clinch. That was a perfect example of a young rebuilding team experiencing growing pains and struggling to overcome nerves in the face of an enormous occasion.

The final episode of the second season will air on September 18, with the Canadiens’ main camp opening just a few days later and the first preseason game being scheduled for September 22. A couple of days later, Crave will premiere another Canadiens-centric series titled Toujours Canadiens, which will focus on Chris Nilan, Stephane Richer, and Claude Lemieux, three players who all won the Stanley Cup with the Sainte-Flanelle and are still Habs at heart.

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