Playing with Komisarek has given Markov (19) the offensive freedom that helped make him an All-Star. Lou Capozzola/SI

The last four or five years it's been unusual to see a hard-hitting defenseman," Philadelphia Flyers assistant coach Terry Murray says. "[In 1982, when Hall of Fame defenseman] Scott Stevens came along, there were other players in the league like him who played hard and gritty and nasty. Now, you see, who? [Calgary's Dion] Phaneuf and Komisarek. Their primary purpose is to stop the cycle, stop a player one-on-one. That's not commonplace today."

Komisarek was always big. So are the giant teddy bears on carnival midways. The son of Polish immigrants -- Roman, who arrived in America with the clothes on his back and who still works in an auto body shop, and Kathy -- Komisarek was a plush toy in his first few years on the ice. He didn't start skating until age 10. When Komisarek was 15 and playing junior hockey, Gerry Hart, the former NHL defenseman who owned the rink near Komisarek's home and who had become his mentor, explained the facts of hockey life at a postgame dinner at Friendly's. "I told him he was playing like a baby," Hart says. "I told Mike and his mother that he needed to be a little mean, hang a licking on someone. And he might have to fight." Upon hearing Hart's counsel, Kathy burst into tears, saying she hadn't raised her son to be a bully or to lord his size over other children.

"The next day I get a call from [Komisarek's junior coach, Gary Dineen], asking, 'What did you say to him?' " Hart recalls. " 'He's hitting guys in practice. I had to tell him to back off.' " Komisarek hasn't backed off since. During his two years at the University of Michigan, walk-ons hopeful of playing for the Wolverines would have to run the Komisarek gantlet. He remembers unloading on the newcomers, helmets and sticks flying as in a cartoon brawl. Says Michigan coach Red Berenson, "I'd have to say, 'Mike, take it easy on your teammates. The enemy comes this weekend.' "

Montreal drafted Komisarek with the seventh pick of the 2001 draft, high for a late bloomer. His penchant for taking himself out of the play to mete out big hits and other forms of hockey justice slowed his progress, but Komisarek still seemed to have top-pair potential until the start of the postlockout season, '05-06. Kathy had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January '05, and after Saturday-night home games that fall Komisarek would catch a sunrise flight to New York and spend the day with her, then return to Montreal that night. "I think Mike felt more guilt than anything else," says Higgins, a close friend who played with Komisarek as a boy on Long Island. "She was real sick, and there he was, playing hockey."

After Kathy's death in November 2005, general manager Bob Gainey thought that the stay-at-home defenseman should actually stay at home, take time on Long Island to clear his mind. But a telephone call to Hart convinced the G.M. otherwise. "He told me that Mike didn't need to be insulated in that way," Gainey says. After firing coach Claude Julien and temporarily going behind the bench himself in January '06, Gainey started giving Komisarek more responsibility. Carbonneau gradually eased him into a larger role last season. Now, with Rivet (traded to San Jose) and Souray (signed with Edmonton) gone, the training wheels have come off.

Paired with the exquisite Markov, Komisarek, who has had five fights this season, became at once the on-ice bad mood that Montreal had sorely lacked. He is a fan favorite. When he drew back-to-back minor penalties against the Rangers late in the second period in the midst of the wild comeback, 21,273 Canadiens partisans littered the ice with giveaway posters. (Think of it as Stanley Cup ticker tape waiting to be shredded.) "The thing that upsets him most is hockey laziness," says Higgins, who shares Komisarek's yoga and workout regimen during summers on Long Island. "He came from a family that worked its ass off to get where they did, and he doesn't want anyone here to take it for granted."

Montreal used to take Stanley Cups for granted, but after more than a decade of fans genuflecting in the direction of the CH out of habit but not belief, they have found their voice. Halte là, halte là, halte là. For a man who has made the biggest team in hockey history big again, this is a hit song.