MONTREAL — With the Montreal Canadiens edging closer to grabbing a foothold in their series with the Washington Capitals — up two goals late in Game 3 — Élise Béliveau popped up on the scoreboard.
Fans pushed the decibels to eardrum-popping levels as soon as they saw her.
Then, as cameras panned away from Élise and over to husband Jean’s retired jersey, the fans began chanting: Béliveau! Béliveau! Béliveau!.
They didn’t need to summon the ghosts of the Forum to terrorize the Capitals at the Bell Centre, though.
Josh Anderson had already done that, landing six hits at terminal velocity throughout the night and flipping the tenor of the series with a fight with Tom Wilson that spilled into Washington’s bench at the end of the second period.
He led, and the Canadiens followed, for a 6-3 win, their reward for an 81-45 lead in shot attempts and a 46-26 edge in hits that stunned a Capitals team that had punched first and hard to build a 2-0 series lead in D.C.
In the chaotic atmosphere of hockey’s most unique cathedral, the Capitals looked nothing like the team that built up the second-best record in the NHL this season. Coach Spencer Carbery cited “nerves” and “a lack of poise” as the reasons after watching his team give the puck away 17 times.
Maybe it was just the sound of Anderson’s heavy footsteps, which galloped ferociously through the neutral zone and into the offensive zone and launched him into every white jersey he could connect with on the forecheck.
The six-foot-three, 236-pounder winger, aptly — if not accidentally — nicknamed “The Powerhorse” by former Canadiens teammate Tomas Tatar, hadn’t been in the playoffs since the team’s 2021 run to the Stanley Cup Final, and COVID-19 had made it so none of his current teammates — with the exception of linemate Brendan Gallagher — had experienced playing games of this nature in front of a full crowd at the Bell Centre.
“It’s a lot of emotions,” said Anderson, who finally realized that dream on Friday. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this. Our fanbase has been waiting, us players have been waiting. It’s been a few tough years. I can’t tell you how excited we were to play in front of our home crowd tonight. Just the buzz around the city driving to the rink, seeing all the jerseys, the atmosphere was unbelievable. We knew it was going to be a hard game to play and a must-win for us to have the momentum in the series, and I thought we had everybody going tonight. We didn’t have any passengers and that’s the playoffs.”
This game represented the playoffs at their most dramatic — with both starting goaltenders leaving the game more than halfway through due to injury, and with Wilson and Anderson trading blows in the Capitals’ bench and trapping Carbery from getting to Washington’s room to settle his team.
“I was on my way to walk across the ice, because you have to walk across it at the Bell Centre,” he said. “So then I had to reverse my course and head back because there was two large individuals coming through the door that I was trying to exit. Just two competitive teams, two competitive guys going at it.”
Arber Xhekaj, who was inserted in favour of Jayden Struble to play his first-ever playoff game, said he and the rest of the Canadiens were inspired by Anderson.
“He’s going every night, so it’s whether we want to follow him or not,” Xhekaj said. “Tonight, we hopped on his train and followed him.”
The Capitals, who had bullied the Canadiens in Washington, just tried to stay off the tracks. But they couldn’t get out of Anderson’s way, or their own.
“It wasn’t good overall, the whole thing, with or without the puck, the whole three zones,” said Carbery.
What he saw from the Canadiens was something different.
“They gave us all sorts of issues, so you’ve got to tip your cap,” he said. “Like I said, I think this was after Game 1 or Game 2, there’s no way the Montreal Canadiens are going to go quietly into the night just because we’re up 2-0 and won two games at home.”
The Capitals got the Canadiens — and their fans — at deafening volume, and it shook them.
Sure, they scored the first goal of the game, and they found a way to claw back two Canadiens leads. But this wasn’t a close game, and the score reflected it in the end.
Lane Hutson, who was hunted through the first two games of the series, attacked to give himself the chance to make the brilliant pass that set Cole Caufield up with the goal that made it 3-2 Canadiens with nine seconds to go in the second period. Anderson’s fight with Wilson followed. And after the Canadiens gave up the tying goal to Alex Ovechkin in the third minute of the third period, they only allowed six shots to get to Jakub Dobes.
“I was afraid, I was excited, I was crying at the end there,” the 23-year-old backup said after replacing Samuel Montembeault in the 32nd minute of play. “I was a mess.”
Logan Thompson was in serious pain after teammate Dylan Strome crashed into him while trying to prevent Juraj Slafkovsky’s first-ever playoff goal in the third period.
It was the 21-year-old’s fifth shot on net, and it came less than 10 minutes after Christian Dvorak scored what proved to be the winner.
Caufield set up Slafkovsky’s goal and had 11 of Montreal’s 40 shots. Alex Newhook scored on one of his three shots with 2:25 to go to turn a tough start by him into an excellent finish. And everyone else on the Canadiens, from Oliver Kapanen — who played for an injured Patrik Laine — to Ivan Demidov fed off the energy from the crowd and rose to the moment.
“What I like about the playoffs, especially with a younger group, is it brings you to another level,” said Martin St. Louis. “Individually, you have something that really pulls you towards that. It’s another level — the ambiance and everything. The trenches are much harder to get through, so it’s an experience that’s really fun for a young athlete.”
The 49-year-old coach of the Canadiens, who was born and raised here, had his own unique experience with it.
“You pull away and you’re up two with six, seven minutes to go, and as much as you need to stay focused, I think you can definitely take a moment and realize the atmosphere that you get to work in,” St. Louis said. “Our fans were unbelievable tonight. We needed that juice, they gave us that juice, and I felt we fed off that and stayed composed and still stayed to the task.”
It rattled the Capitals, leaving Carbery to say of the Canadiens, “They’re a really good hockey team that’s playing very well since the 4 Nations, and down the stretch and all that stuff, and they’ve got a line that’s playing as good as any line in the National Hockey League right now. So they’re a good team, and they’re going to push you, and they’re going to play like they did tonight.”
“We are going to have to be at our best for Game 4, Game 5 and the rest of the series to win the series. That’s just a fact,” Carbery concluded. “We weren’t at our best tonight, and so we need to get to that level in Game 4.”
That will be a challenge once again at the Bell Centre, in that atmosphere, up against Anderson and the galvanized Canadiens.
Never mind the ghosts of the Forum.
