from Jack Todd at the Montreal Gazette,

It’s not yet time to write the obituary, but the Montreal Canadiens have that hangdog look about them — as though they know they’re beaten and they’re just waiting for it to become official before they start booking tee times.

The natives, predictably, are restless. The Canadiens are three points out of the final wild-card berth in the Eastern Conference (and they’d be securely in possession of a berth out west) but already the #FireBergevin and #FireJulien crowds are out in force.

Saturday night, it looked as though the team had come up with a novel strategy to get everyone off the back of the frequently disinterested Jonathan Drouin. “OK guys, here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to go out there and stink out the Bell Centre together so they’ll stop picking on poor Jonathan!”

Against the Chicago Blackhawks, it looked as though Thomas Vanek, René Bourque, Nathan Beaulieu, Alex Galchenyuk, Vladimir Malakhov, Max Pacioretty and the bad Alex Kovalev had all decided to join Drouin and hold a slacker’s reunion on Bell Centre ice.

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