from Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette,

The Canadiens, worn out from scoring goals on the Buffalo Sabres on Friday, did precisely that against the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Bell Centre on Saturday night.

They played like the stuff you shovel out of a horse barn and yet, at the end of the evening, they had a ninth straight win by a comfortable 5-3 margin, even though Brendan Gallagher and P.K. Subban were the only players who didn’t look like they had just flown in on the redeye from Irkutsk.

At this moment, your Montreal Canadiens are the best team in the NHL by so wide a margin it’s as though they’re playing in a league of their own. Not only have they failed to lose a game, they have trailed for a grand total of two minutes and 57 seconds in those nine games — only a little more than the time it takes to kill a single minor penalty.

They have scored more goals (35) and given up fewer (12) than any other team in the league. Even the high-flying offence of the Tampa Bay Lighting has produced only 27 goals.

They slipped a bit while giving up an insane 52 shots to the offensively challenged Leafs, but the Habs still have the top five players in the league in the plus-minus category, although Gallagher is now tied for fifth with Detroit’s Dylan Larkin. The fancy-stat boys will tell you plus-minus is meaningless — but try telling that to the goaltenders who have been suffering at the hands of a team that has definitely amped up its offence.

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