Impressive victory.

The Montreal Canadiens played one of their best game of the season yesterday in a 6-2 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

After facing strong criticism from the press and the fans with the departure of Guy Carbonneau, Bob Gainey and the Canadiens rebounded with an important winning streak during the last two weeks. Yesterday's victory completed a perfect week for the team. Three games, three wins.

But back to yesterday's game, the Canadiens played one of their best game of the season at the Air Canada centre. Alex Kovalev scored a goal and collected three assists, the man-advantage struck three times and the Latendresse-Lapierre-Kostopoulos line was once again red hot.

The only dark cloud over the Canadiens' head in this game was the loss to injury of defense mens Andrei Markov and Mathieu Schneider. Their case will be evaluated this week. Markov needed help to leave the ice after his head hit the boards.

With four games to play in the regular season, the team's situation looks a lot better as Montreal now has three points on the eight place New York Rangers. The Canadiens and the Rangers will face each other next week in an anticipated matchup.

(Picture: Guillaume Latendresse and Maxim Lapierre, Canadian Press.)