MONTREAL — Artturi Lehkonen was standing at the same end of the ice where he scored the Canadiens’ most important goal of this century. That goal, the Game 6 overtime winner that sent Montreal to the Stanley Cup Final in 2021, played above him on the Bell Centre jumbotron.
Lehkonen is a vicious forechecker who keeps to himself and rarely allows his focus to stray while on the ice. But he craned his neck to relive this. Nathan MacKinnon playfully slapped Lehkonen with his stick as the crowd went wild. Lehkonen tapped his heart, saluting his old home.
That moment was the centerpoint of an emotional, exceptional and ultimately uneasy return to Montreal. In a mostly seamless 8-4 Avalanche win Monday, Lehkonen scored on 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 an anticlimactic 100. Then he exited the game with an upper-body injury in the second period. He didn’t return.
