About last night ...

How good was jaro last night?

Even Red Fisher was impressed. And the Living Legend of Sports Journalism is hard to please.

Halak pinpoints Colorado as the game in which he began to get hot. He made 46 saves to beat the Avalanche, got yanked in the third period of a loss at Vancouver and has beaten Ottawa and the Canucks at the Bell Centre.

Through those four starts, Halak's goals-agains average is 2.38 and his save percentage a sizzling .944.

If those were his numbers on the season, Halak would be 10th in the league in GAA and first in save percentage.

Not bad for a player who was chosen 261 spots behind Andrei Kostitsyn – and 231 spots behind Cory Urquhart –  in the 2003 entry draft.

Not bad for a goaltender signed through next season at a bargain-basement $750,000 per.

Not bad for a guy who was pretty much forgotten as Canadiens fans agonized about The Franchise and whined about how dumb it was to trade Cristobal Huet.

For now, Carey Price is the team's backup goaltender.

We can debate whether Price would have done as well as Halak against Vancouver last night. But this is beyond dispute: The Franchise couldn't have done better than the Bratislava Afterthought.

Halak made 34 saves to shut out the Canucks. He stopped two breakaways and  stood tall, for a short goaltender, through six Vancouver power plays, including a two-minute 5-on-3.

Halak is not as physically impressive or technically gifted as Carey Price. My friend and former colleague, Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated, says Halak handles the puck worse than any other goaltender in the league.

But as Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said during his team's march to the Super Bowl, "we don't care about style points."

Dominik Hasek was inelegant. So is Tim Thomas.

The bottom line, especially at this time of the season, is Ws.

Jaro Halak is winning, and he's doing something Price hasn't been able to do: win games in which his teammates have been outplayed.

Halak stole a W in Colorado. He stole another two points last night.

The Canadiens had 17 shots – their lowest total of the season. Quality, however, trumped quantity. The great Roberto Luongo didn't have much of a chance on the Tomas Plekanec and Andei Markov shots that beat him.

Jaro Halak is not the Canadiens' only feel-good story of late February. In four games since his suspension, Plekanec has scored five goals and added two assists.

Pleks is not going to match last season's 29-goal, 40-assist breakthrough. But he had five shots last night, won 11 of 17 faceoffs and his game is coming around at the right time.

During that disastrous western swing, I was ready to throw Plekanec under the bus. He wasn't scoring, his playmaking had gone south and he was softer than a ballet slipper full of wet cow flop.

Pleks will never be a dominant, physical centre like that big galoot wearing number 13 for Vancouver. But unlike some of the other unsigned Canadiens, he is playing his way into Bob Gainey's plans for 2009-'10 and beyond.

Andrei Markov is signed for next season and 2010-'11. At $5.75 million per, Markov is the team's highest-paid player and, IMHO, the Canadiens' MVP.

Markov played 26:05, including 6:10 on the PK. He had a goal on the power play, which has scored in each of the four games since Mathieu Schneider was acquired.

On a night when too many defencemen and forwards laboured to clear the zone and move up ice, Markov stood out as the one D-man capable of skating and/or tape-to-tape passing the puck out of trouble.

He has off-nights and is guilty of too many giveaways. But Andrei Markov would play in the Top Two pairing of any team in the NHL.

And it's cool that in the meritocracy Gainey is trying to run, the Canadiens' best player makes the most money.

Compare that to the New York Rangers.

Some other players I liked last night:

• Saku Koivu was 10-3 on faceoffs and tied Elmer Lach for 10th on the all-time Canadiens point list. And how fitting was it that the Captain's 623rd point was that brilliant, diving pass that found Plekanc coming out of the penalty box? Koivu won't get to Bernard Geoffrion's 759, but this season will bring him past Mats Naslund, Dickie Moore and Lach.

• Maxim Lapierre did a good job on Mats Sundin. Max Squared and  Tom Kostopoulos generated a lot of energy and were the only line that forechecked Vancouver effectively.

• The 13 players used on the PK were uniformly heroic.

• Gregory Stewart chipped in with six quality minutes and rallied from a sucker punch to lay some good shots on Shane O'Brien. Speaking of meritocracy, Stewart is making $500,00 this season – exactly $1 million less than Georges Laraque.

• Josh Gorges played 4:50 on the PK, second only to Markov.

• Patrice Brisebois became the team's number 3 goaltender ... and Price is hearing footsteps.

The Canadiens are two points up on the Rangers, for whom the John Tortorella era begins tonight in Toronto.

They're three head of Buffalo and Florida (which has a game in hand), four points up on Carolina. If the playoffs were to begin tonight, the Canadiens would be in Philadelphia.

Which is where they are Friday, riding the Slovak Strawberry ...