About last night ...

You can't knock their effort last night.

Playing without four valuable starters – Markov, Robert Lang, Alex Tanguay and Mathieu Schneider – the Canadiens took it to the Bruins early. Christopher Higgins gave them their first lead of the series, and had they made it 2-0 .... well, we'll never know.

Or maybe we will. Perhaps the Canadiens will come out with some jump tomorrow night and salvage their pride and dignity by avoiding a sweep.

But let's be realistic on a damp, overcast Montreal morning that provides an apt environment for grim realism.

This series is over ... and it has been for a while.

Soon, very soon we'll begin the post-mortem on the Canadiens' centennial season. And we'll start looking ahead to 2009-'10, a process that began in the press lounge last night when a few scribes wondered aloud what kind of package would pry Vincent Lecavalier out of Tampa Bay.

It will be an interesting late spring and summer.

And there's still some great hockey to be played.

But not here.

One sequence last night symbolized the game – and maybe the season – for me.

A little over 13 minutes into the second period,  the score was tied 2-2 and the Canadiens finally get a power play. It was their first of the game, ony their fourth of the series against the big, reputedly bad Bruins.

The Bruins line up in the faceoff circle to Tim Thomas's left. They're ready to begin the penalty-kill.

Bob Gainey has not sent out his first-wave centre. The Bruins are complaining to the refs, gesturing that the puck should be dropped in accordance with the NHL's quick-faceoff rule.

Saku Koivu had completed a shift 22 seconds earlier. Gainey sends Tomas Plekanec rushing out. Pleks arrives late in the circle and is promptly booted.

Alex Kovalev has to take the faceoff and loses it to Patrice Bergeron (who was 12-6 on draws last night). Bruins gain possession and shoot the puck down the ice. The PP has to retrieve it and regroup, wasting valuable seconds.

It's the kind of SNAFU that didn't happen very often last season.

The Canadiens were to get two more power plays. Neither produced anything; although Yannick Weber, playing the right point, gave every indication that he'll be fun to watch next season and for many years to come.

Weber will turn 21 during what should be an interesting training camp. He'll be a good one – unless the Canadiens screw up his development (see KOSTITSYN, Sergei).

Bob Gainey was to mention that it would have been nice to score on the power play, a goal that did not involve a huge expenditure of effort. As it is, however, Claude Julien has the Bruins playing great hockey, contesting every inch of the ice and making the Canadiens work for their goals, with the result that Thomas has not been overtaxed and has surrendered ony five goals in the series.

Julien talked about his game plan, which worked to perfection during a third-period clamp-down that held the Canadiens to five shots. The Boston coach had his players concentrate on efficient , no-frills zone clearances, avoidance of  turnovers in the neutral zone and pounding the puck deep.

"It's so important this time of year," Julien said. "We wanted to make them come the length of the ice."

Here's a guest analysis from Steve Kerley, who posts as 24 Cups:

The Habs gave it their all in the first two periods and then were basically shutdown and checked into oblivion during the third. I thought it was a decent effort considering the circumstance and the last minute line-up changes.

Three things seemed to hold the Habs back and negate any chance that they might have had in terms of pulling off a miracle. The undermanned defense really struggled to move the puck out of their own end. They seemed to just dump the puck out rather than passing it or creating any flow or transition. The Habs also allowed Boston to kill the momentum that they had built up by allowing the Bruins to score twice after the Canadiens had held an advantage in overall territorial play and shot totals. (8-3 in the first period, and 6-2 in the second.)

That really let the air our of the balloon for a team that could ill afford to make any mistakes. Lastly, the Habs were unable to take advantage of one of their greatest strengths as they went 0-5 on the PP. Sadly, our boys are 0-8 on the PP after the first three games. There’s not much to say about that tale of woe seeing that we were missing four major components of our special team unit.

I guess it’s time to take my dark suit to the cleaners and prepare for the inevitable interment. It’s going to rain again tomorrow so I think I’ll just stay at home and listen to my Leonard Cohen albums. This year has been death by a thousand cuts in terms of being a Hab fan. Only one more laceration left to endure.

Kerley titled his e-mail Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye.

Canadiens haven't said farewell to this disappointing season yet.

But cue up the Cohen albums.

The end is near.