MONTREAL — Artturi Lehkonen was standing at the same end of the rink where he scored the Canadiens’ most important goal of this century. That goal, the Game 6 overtime winner that sent Montreal to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final, replayed above him on the Bell Centre jumbotron.
Lehkonen is a vicious forechecker who keeps to himself and rarely allows his focus to stray from the ice. But he craned his neck for this. Nathan MacKinnon playfully slapped Lehkonen with his stick as the crowd went wild. Lehkonen tapped his heart, saluting his old home.
“Doesn’t surprise me that the fans here liked him a lot,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “He’s a player that plays as hard as he can.”
That relentless reputation was the centerpoint of an emotional, exceptional and ultimately uneasy return to Montreal. In a mostly seamless 8-4 Avalanche win Monday, Lehkonen scored during his first shift after the tribute video, was cheered by the opposing fans, then was given belated credit for an earlier goal to bring his career total to 100. Then he exited the game with a broken finger in the second period.
After the Avs (37-22-6) fly to Toronto on Monday night, Lehkonen will fly back to Denver from there to undergo surgery Wednesday. Bednar was unsure of the recovery timeline.
Colorado smoked the struggling Canadiens with a four-goal first period while allowing only two shots on goal in the first 18-plus minutes. Before the Habs finally scored late in the first, the Avalanche had allowed a combined two shots in a stretch lasting 42:57.
“Using our feet in the D-zone, we’re being less passive,” forward Logan O’Connor said. “We’re being the aggressors, trying to dictate a little bit more.”
But Lehkonen was the main character while he was present in the game, and the main concern once he wasn’t. It was his first game back in Montreal since the Avalanche acquired him at the 2022 trade deadline, ending a six-year run.
The city thanked him with an ovation. Lehkonen returned the thanks with a goal 11 seconds after the ensuing faceoff, clawing for positioning in front of the home team’s net and deflecting Mikko Rantanen’s shot for a 4-0 Avalanche lead.
The high-effort goal might have been the source of the broken finger; Rantanen’s shot appeared to hit Lehkonen in the hand.
“Maybe. I don’t know,” Bednar said. “I know he got hit with a shot, so I’m not sure which play.”
When Lehkonen potted his overtime winner to send the Habs to the Cup Final, there was no home crowd due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans could only party in the streets. So they celebrated this one as compensation, even while getting blown out.
“That was a first. That’s the loudest I’ve seen an away crowd cheer for an opposing goal,” O’Connor said. “Especially being in Montreal, that’s not something they typically do.”
“That was really cool,” Rantanen said. “I’ve never seen that before.”
If the cost of scoring the goal was cruelly ironic for Lehkonen, the hindsight view was just as ironic for Montreal. The Canadiens rallied in the third period with Lehkonen out of the game, trimming Colorado’s lead from 7-2 to 7-4 in a matter of two minutes. Without Lehkonen’s two-goal night, the margin would be narrow. Instead, Valeri Nichushkin sealed the win with 6:51 remaining.
Thirteen different Avs registered at least one point, including a three-assist night for Cale Makar and a 43rd goal for Rantanen. Lehkonen finished with three points. At first intermission, he was credited with the opening goal for deflecting an O’Connor shot. It had initially been deemed O’Connor’s goal.
“(Lehkonen) said it was my goal,” O’Connor testified. “Then I just heard he got it. So obviously it would have tipped him somewhere. … Art’s so good in front of the net.”
So good that his special night ended with him added to the list of Avalanche injuries.
Yet after the game, Lehkonen still appeared to be in good spirits while strolling through the underbelly of Bell Centre. He recognized a stadium usher and said hello. The usher shared that he was happy to see Lehkonen win a Stanley Cup last summer. “Wish it was here, though,” he added as Lehkonen smiled.
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