Montreal Canadiens fans can look forward to the next round of hockey playoffs after their beloved squad ended the Washington Capitals' post-season hopes last night with a thrilling victory to cap an exciting seven game series.

The 2-1 victory took place in Washington but prompted thousands of hometown fans to take to the streets of Montreal, as they celebrated their Habs' first journey past the first round of the playoffs in two years.

As fans danced in the streets, police stood by ready to quell any celebrations that got out of control. But aside from some limited scuffles with police and a small number of arrests, there were few post-victory problems reported Wednesday night.

CTV Montreal's Annie De Melt said the victory put Habs fans in "complete euphoria" after an improbable win from a team that didn't seemed destined for victory at various points in the season.

"The fans surely believe it now," De Melt told CTV's Canada AM from Montreal on Thursday morning.

"We were really not having the kind of hockey fever that we've seen in past years here in Montreal because people were not expecting, perhaps, the team to get this far."

But with the victory over the Capitals, De Melt said it seems likely that "we're going to see it reach a whole new fever pitch and we're going to see those Canadiens flags coming out, people waving them all around town. It's going to be that hockey fever that Montrealers know well from now on I think."

The Canadiens battled back from a 3-1 series deficit to beat the Capitals, a team that dominated the NHL during the regular season.

Montreal fans gave much of the credit for the series victory to Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak, who was depicted as Jesus Christ in a local newspaper. Another paper drew a cartoon of Halak as a Cirque du Soleil acrobat.

The 24–year-old Halak started the year as a backup goalie for the Habs. Now he is the face of a first-round playoff series that saw him stop 131 of 134 shots on net in the final three games of the series.

"Halak was just unbelievable, they deserved to win that series," said McGill University student John Cassels as he stepped out of a Crescent Street bar on Wednesday night.

"The team played just phenomenal, they found ways to win and Halak is definitely a first star."

Halak was proud of his team for the way it fought through adversity to beat back the favoured Capitals.

"We proved them wrong, and we showed a lot of character after being down 3-1 and coming back like that. It's been a great series, but now we have a second round ahead of us and we have to be ready," said Halak.

Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau said it was an astounding loss for his team.

"I would have bet my house that they wouldn't have beaten us three games in a row, and that we would have scored only three goals on almost 140 shots," he said after the loss that ended his team's season.

Next up for the Canadiens is a series against the defending champions, the Sidney Crosby-led Pittsburgh Penguins.

With a tough road ahead for the team, some Habs fans were soaking in the glory that came with a first-round playoff win.

"This is as good as it's going to get," said Marc Tremblay, a young hockey fan who is too young to have taken part in the last Canadiens Stanley Cup celebration in 1993.

Prior to its 1993 win, however, Canadiens fans were used to seeing their team celebrating major victories. Between the 1967-68 and 1978-79 seasons, the Habs won the Stanley Cup eight times.

With files from The Canadian Press