from Dave Stubbs of the Montreal Gazette,

There's playoff hockey — the tight-checking, goal-pinching, palm-dampening, heart-pounding stuff that tests your cardiac health and makes you wonder why your team bothers playing 82 NHL games in regular-season slush.

And then, there's the guilty-pleasure, exhibition free-for-all stuff of sloppy and loose play, training-camp timing, sometimes dubious goaltending and piles of goals, a puck in the net with seemingly every third shot.

With the Canadiens' entire season riding on Tuesday's game against the New York Rangers, a berserk Bell Centre crowd paid buckets of money to watch the latter, a blend of ball hockey, broomball, probably croquet and heaven knows what else.

It was many things, but playoff hockey was not among them. And those fans who watched might all be happily scarred for life.

To say nothing of the coaches who witnessed this unnatural disaster unfold and might not sleep for days because they did.

"A gong show," was how Rangers defenceman Dan Girardi put it.

"It was, to say the least, a strange game," said Rangers coach Alain Vigneault.

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