STANLEY CUP FINALS : If It’s Overtime, It Must Be LeClair : Hero: Same Canadien, same result. It simply takes a little longer this time.

In the split second it took John LeClair to digest all the information his eyes took in, he knew what he had to do.

Unexpectedly finding the puck on his stick along the left boards, LeClair quickly seized the moment. He saw teammate Stephan Lebeau to his right and immediately realized that only King defenseman Darryl Sydor was in front of him, posing the lone obstacle between LeClair and the Kings’ net.

“All I knew was that the puck was coming to my side because that was my man, but nobody was there, so I had a clear two-on-one,” he said. “Their defenseman must have pinched (gotten caught in the offensive zone) . . .

“It’s still an amazing feeling, to score two overtime goals in the Stanley Cup finals. Truly amazing. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought about that.”

Reality exceeded his dreams Monday night, when he corraled the rebound of his own shot and tucked the puck between King goaltender Kelly Hrudey and the left post 14:37 into overtime for his second successive goal in sudden-death play.

Monday’s goal, LeClair’s fourth of the playoffs, gave Montreal a 3-2 victory and a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, as the teams go back to the Montreal Forum for Game 5 Wednesday night.

“I don’t think anybody would see themselves scoring the back-to-back overtime goals,” said LeClair, who had scored off a rebound Saturday night 34 seconds into overtime. “As far as hockey goes, this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me.”

LeClair, a Vermont native who is finishing his first full season with the Canadiens, is piling up exciting moments in the playoffs.

“John LeClair is going to be a very, very rich man,” Canadien Coach Jacques Demers said of his 6-foot-2, 205-pound forward, who has been playing left wing in this series on a line with Kirk Muller and Brian Bellows. “Remember, he didn’t play in the playoffs last year. He’s a star to be.”

He performed like a star Monday night, never hesitating as he carried the puck up ice in overtime.

“I had ‘pass’ on my mind the whole time,” he said. “Their defensemen were dropping all night and I thought if I faked, I could get him out of position . . .

“I had immediately spotted Stephan (Lebeau) and realized it’s a two-on-one. The first thing I wanted to do was fake a shot and see if the defenseman would commit, because Kelly Hrudey likes to come out and challenge (the shooter). When I faked the shot, he went down, as I expected. I ended up behind the goal line.”

His first shot, from a deep angle, was repelled by Hrudey.

“It got his blocker,” LeClair said. “Then it came kind off back to me. He was down and out and I just went between him and the post.”

As he maneuvered around the fallen Hrudey, LeClair intended to jam the puck inside the post. But Sydor, sliding across the net to help Hrudey, inadvertently became a backboard for the shot.

“I had my head down a little and I saw (Sydor) coming,” LeClair said. “He was just coming so quickly, he couldn’t stop himself and he put the puck and himself into the net.”

Much as LeClair restrained his impulse to celebrate his goal, he rebuffed anyone who insisted his goal had won the Cup for the Canadiens.

“They’ve got a lot of character. They played desperate hockey,” he said of the Kings.

“Hey, it takes four to win. We haven’t won anything yet.”