Ottawa’s two-goal advantage was halved just over five minutes into the third thanks to a goal from Vincent Damphousse that came after Ottawa lost a key blue-liner. A back-and-forth period saw Sylvain Turgeon restore the two-goal lead with 2:09 to play, only to have Brian Bellows answer back for Montreal. It wasn’t until Smail sealed the deal with an empty-netter that the Civic Centre could erupt.

SHAW I got knocked out the first shift of the third period. We won a faceoff, I went back, Kirk Muller hit me. It was a clean hit, I should have seen him coming, I didn’t. I hit the stanchion and I broke my helmet when my head hit the ice. I’ve since worked with Kirk [as assistant coaches in St. Louis]. We’ve talked about it, it’s kinda funny. My son was two or three days old at the time, so [my wife] was dealing with him and the neighbour came over and knocked on the door and she said, “How you doing?” and [my wife said] “OK. What do you mean?” She said, “Brad’s been laying on the ice for the last five minutes motionless. Have you not been watching the game?” She said, “No, I’ve been dealing with Brady.” That was back in the day where I missed one game.

HAMMOND I remember trying to get Muller back in the neutral zone, throwing a knee at him. I got called for kneeing. J.J. Daigneault came up and I was like, “Shit, I gotta take somebody to the box [with me] or I’m going to be in deep trouble here.” So I tried to get Daigneault to fight me and he wouldn’t fight and I ended up head-butting him as he was leaning in. I was like, “Oh my God, I’ve got potentially the winning goal, a head-butting penalty and now we’re going to lose it [on my penalty].” [The game] had a little bit of everything. Between lions being dropped from the ceiling, head-butting and scoring a goal on Patrick Roy, it was a full night.

BOWNESS The players were feeding off the enthusiasm of the crowd. That’s what you remember, the noise in the rink and the excitement. Every play, every pass, every shot, every faceoff — the crowd was reacting.