I've covered a lot of series in my 26 years of doing this, and I can tell you we are at that inevitable time in just about every confrontation that the bargaining to the officials begins by the smaller team.

The Habs defence cannot find a way to block out and force wide the bigger Caps players. As a result, the Habs goalies are not seeing many shots and facing many more from inside 10 feet. No goalie is going to look talented if he can't see the puck or has to react to it that quickly.

The Habs can see the Caps winning all the valuable ice and they can do nothing about it.

So begins the appeal to the league and the on-ice officials to intervene on their behalf.

They'll complain that the blue paint is the goalie's domain. It will fall on deaf ears, unless one of two things happen: the Habs forwards crash the crease back and leave Varlamov worrying too about his health. Failing that, Price going ballistic that someone is all over him usually works too.

The league will only stand up and take notice that something has to be done if both teams' goalies are feeling the pain, and making an issue of it. If just the Habs are bothered and there isn't a semi-incident, the Habs will finish up this series without a solution to the bigger Caps forwards.

This amping-up-the-anger scenario is a win-win for the Habs as the result will be the league being careful about it on both sides of the ice. That's fine for Montreal. They don't play that way anyway. They're not big enough.

Also, if Martin spends a couple days complaining about crease crashing, the attention is shifted from the Caps starting to clearly assert themselves as the better team.

By game four, the league will have an issue on its hands. The Caps might not be able to have a man standing in the blue paint for a good portion of the game, or take a penalty if they do. The Habs won't change a thing about their game.

And game four could be different.

I won't disagree with you, it's an elaborate scenario. Then again I have seen it every year since I was 20.

History repeats. The bad news that I haven't told you yet: all of this -- while sounding like a plan and serving a useful purpose -- never works.

It is just one of those steps the losing team takes towards the inevitable.