Winning conditions for Habs

by Red Fisher / The Gazette

Koivu  voted  the  first star as Canadiens  finally  get  things  right in  victory over Kings.

Forty-eight  hours earlier,  Saku  Koivu  had  the words  for  it:   the formula  to stop  the bleeding —at least for a little while. What  you do, he  was  saying  after the Canadiens  had fallen 4-3  to  Pittsburghon Saturday, their seventh loss in  eight games, is find a way of  playing  three  decent periods.  No time out for caving in, as the Canadiens have  done too often thus far this season.

 Maybe  it  was the feeble competition. Perhaps it was because the Canadiens got  good goal  tending  from  Jeff  Hackett  at  the right time,  which   often  brings  with it  the  good fortune a goal tender needs.   Maybe it was the solid work defensively, as a team,   that held  the Los Angeles Kings  to a  meagre  total  of  10  shots, 11 in first  two  periods. In the final analysis,  though,  last  night's 3-1 victory  was an  amalgam  of all those things.

"All I  can  say is that it's about   time,"  said  Koivu,  who scored  the  game's first goal  and was named  its first star. " We  had a pile  of chances in  the first  two  periods,  missed far  too  many, but Hackett  was  there for us while the  game  was close in  the first  two  periods.
[ . . .]¹

  Analysis of a Newspaper Article

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¹ Red FISHER,  "Winning conditions for Habs," The Gazette, Montreal, Tuesday, December  1, 1998, Section C 1. Col.  one.
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