Thursday’s episode of the Crave series The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens aired on Thursday and focused solely on the Habs’ qualification for the playoffs and the series against the Washington Capitals.
Seeing how the players reacted to the qualification and how much they wanted to make the spring dance, not only for themselves and for the team, but also for veteran defenseman David Savard.
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We got a glimpse of that faithful April 16 from behind the scenes with Geoff Molson spending the whole day at the Bell Centre, Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton watching from above on pins and needles when the Canadiens were desperately trying to seal the deal with an empty net goal.
The aftermath was also notable, with Martin St-Louis receiving the game puck from his team for his first playoff appearance as a coach. Seeing the unbridled joy in his face was quite something, because what we usually see is a guy who’s fully dialed in and just focused on his job.
The show then showed the making of the playoffs’ opening ceremony and the thinking that went behind having Carey Price, the man who last guided the team to the playoffs, light up the ice, and just how important it seemed to be for the organization to get the fans as pumped up as possible. An employee even recalls a player telling her that when the fans are waving the towels and screaming their heads off, you can actually feel the vibrations in the building.
Of course, the realization that playoff hockey is a different animal is part of the conversation as we see several extracts of the series against the Washington Capitals and of Tom Wilson’s impact on proceedings through his bone-crushing hits. While it’s obvious the team would have liked its playoff journey to last a lot longer, we see the realization that something is missing, particularly in terms of grit and physicality.
One of the most interesting parts of this final episode has to be Gorton and Hughes’ end-of-season talk with Juraj Slafkovsky. While the youngster wonders where his head was at in October and November and why he couldn’t play like he did at the end of the season, his bosses tell him that he has to be mentally ready when he comes to camp and not just physically prepared. Gorton even adds that self-flagellation in the media is not the way to get back on track, either. As for Hughes, he asks the power forward if he saw what Wilson did in the series against the Caps and tells him that he could be that guy for the Canadiens.
Will there be another season? They joke about it, saying it needs a new name now that they've made the playoffs, but I think there’s a real appetite for it among fans. It’s an excellent way to get to know both the organization and the players in a new light.
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