Our history - The historical website of the Montreal Canadiens

THE PLAYOFFS

The road to the Montreal Canadiens twelfth Stanley Cup victory had eleven stops along the way against adversaries who had failed to make it into the postseason the year before. It was also made a bit rockier by inopportune injuries that limited Maurice Richard and Jean Beliveau to only seven postseason appearances between them.

Rugged Marcel Bonin stepped into the breach and led all playoff scorers, lighting the lamp ten times while wearing an injured Rocket Richard’s gloves for most of the Habs playoff run. Dickie Moore, who led all postseason players with a dozen assists, spent much of the final series feeding Bonin, but also managed to bury the puck five times himself.

Semi-final opponents, the third-place Blackhawks stretched Montreal to six games, winning games three and four at home to tie the series before dropping the fifth and sixth and allowing the Canadiens through to the finals for the ninth spring in a row.

The last Stanley Cup confrontation between the Habs and the Leafs, in the spring of 1951 did not finish well for Montreal. This time the series again went five games but the outcome was much more satisfactory. Winning the opener 5-3 after a Bonin goal broke a 3-3 deadlock, the Habs took the second game 3-1 with Claude Provost coming to the fore with a pair of goals.

Toronto won only the third game, taking it 3-2 thanks to Dick Duff’s overtime goal before Bernard Geoffrion closed things down with the winning markers in both the fourth and final games.

The Canadiens fourth straight Stanley Cup went one better than the Toronto run a decade earlier but the Habs weren’t quite finished monopolizing Lord Stanley’s Cup.