Destiny's kids?

Take a ride, will you, on the way-back machines to 1986, and let's see if this Habs team can match up to that least likely of Stanley Cup champions in Montreal since Ken Dryden's real rookie season in 1971.

Of course, starting in nets, we remember that in 1985-86, the Canadiens' top netminder most of the year was a fellow by the name of Doug Soetart, but when Soetart got hurt and tired, and Steve Penney forgot how to stop a puck, head coach Jean Perron turned to a 20-year-old rookie hotshot named Patrick Roy.

It's hard not to draw comparisons with the way the Canadiens handed the reins to 20-year-old Carey Price when they unloaded Cristobal Huet at the trade deadline, but everything's going so great now for the kid that it seems like years ago the Canadiens sent him to the minors because they didn't feel he would be seeing enough ice in a stretch against a pile of good teams. That tells me in January, they didn't feel he was ready to be the guy.

But now, he is. That makes the Roy-Price comparison an easy one.

But where else? Turns out there's a bunch more that we can talk about.

Check in as this post continues with discussion of how Andrei Markov is better than Chris Chelios* and how Guillaume Latendresse must learn to channel his inner Mike McPhee.