By TIM BURKE
of The Gazette

The Montreal Canadiens and the Central Red Army re-lit the lamps of hockey a mari usque ad mare on Wednesday night.

In a display of skill and sportsmanship rarely seen here in recent times, the protagonists demonstrated to millions of Canadians that their national game reaches an art form when discipline and hard work take priority over mayhem.

In recapturing their primacy as Canada's foremost sporting aggregation, the Canadiens did an incalculable favor for the youth of the nation with their exemplary conduct. It came when hockey was at its nadir, beset on all sides for its avarice, violence and poor quality.

But to restore the game to the exalted level it reached on New Year's Eve, radical changes in the structure of professional hockey must be made at once.

One advocate of this is Serge Savard, a star defenceman in this lopsided 3-3 tie -- Canadiens' 38-13 edge in shots was a remarkably accurate gauge in their command of the play -- who feels that the NHL schedule should be cut and international competition rapidly increased.

"I like the style the Russians play for many reasons," Savard said. "I like it because it can't help but improve the skills of a hockey player. For too long we've had to put violence into our game, fighting and hitting guys over the head with your stick because that's what the crowd wanted to see. Or what we thought the crowd wanted to see.

"Tonight," he said, "you saw real hockey and the crowd liked it didn't they? What good did it do for NBC to put on all those promotions showing fights in hockey? We still lost the contract for the Game of the Week."

Savard feels that if NHL teams don't adapt to the styles demonstrated here Wednesday that European teams will overrun them in the near future.

"It's impossible to improve our skills the way we're playing the game now," he said. "Worse still, there are a lot of potentially great hockey players who never make it to our league because of the emphasis on brutality. Great little guys with all the skills but not the physiques to take the punishment."

Worse still, he said, the 80-game NHL schedule is so grinding that it's impossible to get prepared for a game. "How can you be prepared when you have to play five games in six days? You're not a hockey player out there, you're a robot."

Unless they slash the schedule and bring in regular competition with the Russians and the Czechs and the Swedes, he feels, the NHL could be in danger of expiring.

"I don't think there should be more than 12 teams in the league to begin with," he said. "Not only are there too many teams right now -- 18 - but each one acts like a separate country. Eighteen little countries caring about nothing except their own interests."

The Canadiens took glorious care of this nation's interests on the final day of 1975, surpassing even the Boston Red Sox' memorable victory over the Cincinnati Reds in the sixth game of the World Series.

The team carried out Scotty Bowman's brilliant game plan almost to the letter, combining their own freewheeling style with the Philadelphia Flyers' rigidly disciplined checking style.

Only a phenomenal performance by the Red Army's superb goaltender, Vladislav Tretiak, kept victory from their grasp. The crowning irony of the whole thing is that the Canadiens probably hurt their cause by protecting their goaltender, Ken Dryden, so well that he never had a chance to warm up.

Before the game, Dryden had stressed the fact that he figured he would play well because he would be a big "factor" in the game -- and indeed, he's usually at his best when he's busiest.

Instead, there were desperately long gaps between shots from the Russians, and as a result two of the three they managed in the second period went past him.

Scoring for the Canadiens were Steve Shutt, Yvan Cournoyer and Yvon Lambert. For the Russians, it was Boris Mikhailov, Valeri Kharlamov and Boris Aleksandrov. Only Kharlamov's goal, a backhand to the far corner just an inch or two inside the post, was unstoppable. The other two plopped out of Dryden's glove after he had stopped them.

The Canadiens of this season may not be the best team ever to wear the Tricolore, but in this most significant game ever played, they were peerless.

Usually a year ends on a sleazy note of excess. The year 1975 concluded with an unforgettable classic.