MTL vs BOS

BOSTON - Zdeno Chara has not suddenly morphed into Bobby Orr, Tim Thomas has not turned into Gerry Cheevers, and even though Claude Julien couldn’t deny the similarities when asked about it Monday, Milan Lucic has not been replaced in the lineup by Cam Neely.

These are the exact same Boston Bruins that the Montreal Canadiens not only dominated this season, but also managed to score 39 goals on in only eight regular season meetings. Yet those same Boston Bruins have held the league’s highest scoring team to four goals in the past two games, and Habs coach Guy Carbonneau has a simple reason why.

“It’s the same personnel we beat eight times this season,” he said. “They’re just working.”

Carbonneau basically said that wasn’t the case for his team in Game 3 on Sunday night, a 2-1 overtime loss where the Habs had flashes of their old selves, but those flashes were too few and far between.

The only Canadiens players Carbonneau’s words wouldn’t apply to is the line of Bryan Smolinski, Tom Kostopoulos and Steve Begin, who have matched Boston’s newfound intensity and combativeness. Not coincidentally, Smolinski and Kostopoulos are also the team’s leading scorers with three points each.

“If you look at both teams,” Carbonneau said, “it’s the lines that work which are having the most success.”

The line that’s not working for the Canadiens is the one centred by Tomas Plekanec, who is taking his lack of success extremely hard. Maybe even too hard.

“The last two games, I played like a little girl out there,” he said Monday.

Plekanec has two assists in the series, but he hasn’t scored a goal since potting two in the final three minutes of regulation in a 4-3 overtime win at Buffalo on March 28, and that is the only one of his last 16 games in which he’s scored.

Plekanec is not getting much help from his winger Alex Kovalev, who appears to be getting rattled from the continuous head shots he’s been taking from Chara and the little slashes and tugs every member of the Bruins are mandated to deliver on him.

But it is clear that the Canadiens will only go as far in the playoffs a s that line takes them, and the Habs can’t have a checking line serve as the offensive catalyst.

“They’ve been our best line all season and they’re watched closely, especially here in Boston where I don’t have the last change,” Carbonneau said. “Claude’s doing a great job sending the players he wants to face them.”

Canadiens assistant coach Doug Jarvis - who manages the Montreal power play - spent Monday pouring over tape of the first three games to try and find a chink in the suddenly daunting armour of the Bruins penalty kill.

All of Montreal’s pet plays - the diagonal feed from Andrei Markov at the point to Kovalev in the opposite circle for a one-timer, the backdoor play from the goal line to a streaking Markov, and the cross-slot one-timer feed to either Plekanec or Andrei Kostitsyn, to name a few - have been taken away by the Bruins. The result is one measly goal in 17 attempts, whereas the Canadiens scored 10 goals in 34 attempts in eight regular season meetings against Boston.

Mark Streit, however, brought everyone to order Monday as a frantic media corps attempted to dissect in great detail where the Canadiens have gone astray.

“We’re up 2-1 and we’re still in great shape,” Streit said. “We might need one or two adjustments in our game, but this is the playoffs. You see it in every series throughout the league, nobody is up 3-0. It’s going to be a lot of hard work. They have a good team, we knew that. We have to stick to our strengths. We have a really quick team and we have to keep it simple, much more than we have.”

Streit is right (that’s pretty catchy, no?), because if it weren’t for two spectacular saves by Thomas in the first five minutes of overtime Sunday the Canadiens would have a 3-0 stranglehold on this series, and most of the questions Monday would have been about the possibility of sweeping the series.

Carbonneau said lineup changes are very possible for Game 4 - defenceman Ryan O’Byrne should dress to add some bulk on Montreal’s back line - but he’s aware that this is no time to overreact.

“I’m not afraid to make changes, but we don’t want to do it just for the sake of making changes,” he said. “We just lost a game in overtime, we had good chances to win the game, so you have to be careful.”

Montreal is also very good at recovering from a losing effort, sporting a 25-7-3 record this season following either a regulation or overtime loss.

“We’ve always responded really well after a loss,” Carbonneau said. “I don’t see why we can’t do that (Tuesday).”