Few injuries, good chemistry provide ideal formula as Habs head for playoffs

[Habsfan84]

The Canadiens soon will announce their winner of the Jacques Beauchamp Award, an annual prize to the team's "fourth star," or player deemed by journalists covering the team to be its most unsung hero.
The award won't be presented to the club's training staff, but you could find many good arguments why it should be.
Most recently, head athletic therapist Graham Rynbend and his crew have found a way to stem the nosebleeds that come from climbing to the summit of the NHL's Eastern Conference.

Their work has been unheralded, at least outside of the dressing room, though it began long before the season got underway.
If the Canadiens aren't twice as good a team as they were in 2006-07, at least they're twice as healthy heading into the final six games of the regular season.
And a large part of that credit belongs to Rynbend, athletic therapist Nick Addey-Jibb, strength and conditioning co-ordinator Scott Livingston, osteopath consultant Dave Campbell and game-day physiotherapist Donald Balmforth.
Through 76 games, heading into the latest "most important game of the year" against the Ottawa Senators tonight, Canadiens players have lost a total of 80 man-games to injury (91, including the departed Cristobal Huet and Garth Murray).
The figure will grow with defenceman Mike Komisarek expected to miss a few weeks with an injury to either his groin or lower back, the playoff-time shroud of mystery again out of mothballs.
Still, compare 80 to the 165 games lost last year, when the Canadiens missed the playoffs for the fifth time in nine seasons.
At this time last year, the team had a record of 39-31-6 and sat 10th in the East with 84 points, two points south of the playoff cut. That's the margin by which they'd finally fall short.
Now: 42-24-10 and parked atop the conference, their 94 points a dozen north of the cut.
"It would take a total disaster for us to miss the playoffs now," head coach Guy Carbonneau said Saturday following his club's 3-2 shootout win over the Boston Bruins, completing an eight-game season sweep of an Original Six rival.
Montreal has won 11 straight over Boston, an impressive run if only the club's seventh-longest domination of another club. Their record is 23 in a row over the Washington Capitals from Oct. 31, 1974 to March 25, 1978.
(But here's a scary, uncharted statistic: if the Canadiens had split this season's eight games with Boston, they'd now be No. 7 in the East, just four points inside the playoff cut.)
So how to explain this quantum leap in a season expected by most so-called experts to be yet another early Montreal exit?
Chemistry? Good health? A few lucky bounces?
"I think it's everything," said Carbonneau, who himself has matured nicely behind the bench in his sophomore year. "The fact we stayed healthy all year is a big plus for our club.
"I won't apologize for that. If people don't like that we're healthy, that's too bad. We've worked hard at it. We've given (players) days off, we've played four lines and six defencemen, we've changed players sometimes when they were playing good, but nobody's complained.

"Nobody's come into my office and said: 'I don't play enough, I need to play more, we need to play three lines.' "
An uncommon consistency has kept the Canadiens from slipping into anything deeper than a three-game skid. This team is closer than those of recent vintage and everyone has bought into the big picture, eager to paint a piece of it.
"(Consistency) has been a lot better this year than last," captain Saku Koivu said. "When you win games like (Saturday's) and win games when you're not playing your best, then when you do play your best and can score five, six goals, that does make a difference.

"Even though we've played well, we haven't started to feel too relaxed or think about what's going to happen in the playoffs.
"But there's a big difference in the mental part, knowing you can kind of start getting ready for the playoffs with six or seven games to go. We had to play to the end (last season), playoff-type hockey for 10 or 15 games."
There have been just two modest dented-ego speedbumps:
Veteran Mathieu Dandenault considered aloud that he'd have to discuss his future with family and his agent after he was a healthy scratch on Jan. 8, his first of until now 19 games left out of the lineup. The three-time Stanley Cup champion took it back a day later, not wishing to distract his team à la Sergei Samsonov last season.
And rookie forward Mikhail Grabovski went AWOL between Phoenix and Los Angeles on March 7, unhappy that he'd been scratched. He apologized, was forgiven and had a goal and an assist last week in the Canadiens' 4-3 shootout loss to St. Louis.
Dandenault and fellow veterans Patrice Brisebois, Tom Kostopoulos and Steve Bégin have been listed as healthy scratches for a combined 70 games, victims of robust health and the numbers game.
But beyond the peep from Dandenault, there hasn't been a breath of public protest from four consummate pros.
Nor should they expect a call tonight, the coach preparing to dress Saturday's team for a game against Ottawa that's far too important to look beyond - no matter the playoffs which loom.
"This team performs best when it's focusing on one game," Koivu said, "and not about what's happening in a week or two."
As for the unsung-hero award? Put it in the stall of defenceman Josh Gorges, "a really good teammate who cares more about the team than himself," says Carbonneau, and who can offer visitation rights to the many on this team who richly deserve it.