Halak puts an exclamation mark on one of the best opening rounds in Stanley Cup history

The opening round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup championships produced a series of notable storylines, including:

• entertaining hockey, combining both a potent offensive display of 5.9 goals per game (the highest since 1996) and some superb goaltending, most notably that of Jaroslav Halak, who stood on his head to lead the Montreal Canadiens past Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals; 
• tight hockey, with a total of 49 games in the first round (the most since 1995) and 12 of them overtime results (the most since 2001). There wasn't a single four-game sweep, only one five-game series, five six-gamers and two that went the distance to seventh games;
• unpredictable hockey, with road teams winning 27 of the 49 games and four series going to the lower-seeded teams.

Yet with all due respect to the resurgent Detroit Red Wings, the resilient Boston Bruins and the surprising Philadelphia Flyers, the single biggest storyline of the conference quarter-finals is Halak and the Habs. The Slovak Olympian goaltender is one of the major reasons why this first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs has to go down as one of the best in modern history.

This is the first time an eighth-seed has knocked off a top-seed after falling behind three games to one. But it's more than No. 8 ousting No. 1 within a conference, it's actually No. 16 in the playoffs eliminating No. 1 overall.

That's why Halak has already earned himself a special place in the 100-year history of the Canadiens (and in the hearts of their fans). He stole the last three games for Montreal and his performance in game six at the Bell Centre was one for the ages, invoking comparisons with rookie Ken Dryden and the 1971 Stanley Cup champions and rookie Patrick Roy and the 1986 champion Canadiens.

Dryden and Roy made history because they won three and four series, respectively. Halak is only one-quarter of the way to the peak of Mount Stanley. What he has done, however, is what Dryden did 39 years ago: beat the top-ranked team in the Stanley Cup tournament. And even with Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins on the horizon, it's a start that's intriguing for Canadiens boosters and, even moreso, for Halak's agent, Allan Walsh.

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