Tampa Bay Lightning's Steven Stamkos scores on Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price during second period of Game 2 NHL second round playoff hockey action in Montreal, Sunday, May 3, 2015.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
When he finally deposited a genuine NHL puck into an actual, bona fide NHL net, Tampa Bay Lightning captain Steven Stamkos leaped into teammate Ryan Callahan's arms and released what can only be described as a primal roar.
There happened to be 21,000 other people in the building at the time, but they were suddenly voiceless – din, interrupted.
It's what happens when your favourite team's playoff hopes die a little. Or a lot.
The marker gave the visitors a lead in a game in which the Habs were demonstrably the better team for long swaths.
"That's what you need from your guy," Tampa coach Jon Cooper said.
With a 6-2 rout, Stamkos's Bolts now hold a 2-0 series lead, and the Habs know how the Ottawa Senators felt in the first round.
Clubs have rallied from 0-2 deficits only 37 times in 293 occasions (a 12.6-per-cent success rate); Montreal last did it in 2004 against Boston and has no plans on rolling over.
"There's no quit in this team," defenceman P.K. Subban said.
Fine, but should they win on the ice of the best home team in the NHL and stretch this to six as the Sens did, it would be an accomplishment.
There is a sense of incipient menace when Toronto native Stamkos is on (only Alex Ovechkin can plausibly claim to be a more dangerous goal scorer). Watching the Lightning scratch and grind against the Detroit Red Wings in the first round was to wonder what this club could do with an in-form Stamkos and more effective power play.
As the Habs would shortly learn, it's a scary picture.
Montreal didn't help itself by taking multiple penalties to allow the visitors back into the game.
Brandon Prust took a double minor for roughhousing with Braydon Coburn; the two would later drop the gloves – Prust would throw an elbow pad into the Tampa bench, which Stamkos fielded cleanly and tossed into the stands.
"They were pretty excited about getting a game-used elbow pad," said Stamkos, who admitted relief at scoring.
"Tonight hopefully will be the start of something good, some confidence. I definitely felt better with the puck [after that]. Your legs feel a little better, too, when you get things going offensively. It's a start," he added.
After the game, Prust let it rip on referee Brad Watson, ("He kept provoking me; he came to the box and called me every name in the book … he tries to play God. He tries to control the game and he did that tonight."
His frustration was mirrored by coach Michel Therrien, who called his team's lack of discipline "unacceptable."
They'll have to address that, and also keep an eye on the guy in the 91 jersey.
Stamkos hadn't scored a goal in his past 11 playoff games, an eternity by his standards, and looked generally out of sorts in the opening eight games of his playoffs.
Was he injured? Was he being checked into obsolescence?
Sadly for Habs fans, no.
It turns out he just needed the right opportunity, and it came at 8 minutes 6 seconds of the second period.
With the teams knotted at 1-1 – Tampa's goal having come via its slumbering power play, another worrying trend for Montreal – Jason Garrison zipped a gorgeous breakaway pass up the centre of the ice, lofting it above Habs centre Tomas Plekanec's stick and neatly bisecting defencemen Andrei Markov and Tom Gilbert.
Markov reached out to knock the puck through Stamkos's feet, but instead it bounced up, and the Tampa speedster controlled it.
Now, sometimes a goal is more than just a goal. One senses the symbolism of what Stamkos did next will weigh heavily in this series.
Despite the puck bobbling wildly, Stamkos served goalie Price a virtuoso-level move, faking a shot, switching the puck to his backhand and pulling it back to his forehand and tucking it home as the best goalie in the NHL tripped over his skates.
About four minutes after Stamkos's goal, Tampa's power play went to work once again.
The teams had been playing at four-on-four because of coincidental penalties when Gilbert's crosscheck felled Tyler Johnson by the side of the net.
Given a chance to operate at four-on-three, Stamkos and Johnson's line (with Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat) wasted no time.
Stamkos manned the point and zipped a pass to Johnson, who was stationed near the goal line to Price's right. He instantly whipped a feed to Kucherov on the right faceoff circle.
Thousands of goals have been scored at the Bell Centre, few of them simpler than Kucherov's shot into a wide-open net.
Tampa would add another power-play goal before the end of the period, and a fourth in the third (Stamkos earned his third point of the night), and while Gilbert pulled one back, Tampa would score a sixth.
In the third period, the Bell Centre was quiet to the point where a child could fall asleep against his dad's shoulder in the reds.
If the Canadiens don't find another gear in Tampa during Games 3 and 4, the building could be both quiet and dark within the week.