from Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette,

On Monday morning, the city was in a state of euphoria after the Canadiens swept that playoff-like home-and-home, weekend series against the Ottawa Senators to seemingly take firm command of first-place in the Atlantic Division. People were saying things like “bring on the Rangers” and laughing about how we didn’t need to worry about the Sens.

Then came Tuesday night, the most boring game of the year. The sad-sack Detroit Red Wings shuffled into town, put the crowd to sleep (with a little help from the drowsy Habs) and before you could say “this is a familiar scenario,” Longueuil hockey hero Anthony Mantha was laughing in the faces of Alex Galchenyuk and Shea Weber, and scoring the winning goal in overtime. Oops.

But that was nothing compared with Thursday night’s nightmare on Avenue des Canadiens. The Carolina Hurricanes, also way down there in the Eastern Conference standings, taught the Canadiens another lesson in hockey, hammering Les Boys 4-1.

Around the same time, former Hab Mike Condon, deemed to be expendable last year by Habs management, was stopping Sidney Crosby in a shootout to give the Senators a 2-1 victory over the Penguins and pull Ottawa to within one-point of the Canadiens atop the Atlantic Division. Oops, Part III.

In short, all is not right in Habs Nation. So why is our team so inconsistent? Well in fact, they’ve been inconsistent all year. This is, as is so often the case with recent Canadiens squads, a Jekyll and Hyde team.

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