The Montreal Canadiens and Buffalo Sabres will play Game 7. The Sabres were absolutely dominant in a 8-3 win on Saturday night, forcing the Canadiens to a deciding game for the second time in their 2026 playoff run.
Wilde Horses
Buffalo head coach Lindy Ruff started Saturday’s game with Alex Lyon in net. That call went extremely poorly for Ruff and for Lyon, who looked like he didn’t want to be in the net for play of this intensity. On the first shot he faced, Arber Xhekaj let go of a simple wrist shot to get it deep. Lyon whiffed.
Lyon had no chance on the second shot that came his way. The Canadiens power play threw the puck around beautifully. It was Cole Caufield to Lane Hutson to Ivan Demidov, who absolutely wired it just under the bar for his second goal in two games.
Hutson picked up his 13th playoff point with an assist, and he is moving into some lofty company in Canadiens history. Larry Robinson holds the record for the most points in single playoff season at 21.
Only Robinson, Chris Chelios, J.C. Tremblay, Eric Desjardins and P.K Subban have had more than the 13 Hutson now holds.
Lyon also let in the third shot he faced. It was weak, too. Jake Evans didn’t get all of it on a two-on-one, and Lyon again didn’t move well at all. He got the hook. Lyon with a Goals Saved Above Expected of -2.74. It actually seems a bit unfair as there was no way he was stopping Demidov’s shot, but he should have had the other two.
Lyon was pulled for Akko-Pekka Luukkonen and the Canadiens never scored again.
Wilde Goats
The Canadiens had come out flat in previous games where they had a chance to take hold of a series. Nick Suzuki said that he felt the club didn’t match the urgency in the Tampa series when they were leading, nor in game four of the Buffalo series.
It was almost as if they over-reacted to that feeling on Saturday. Their energy was so high that the entire proceedings were absolutely frantic. On the first goal against, Juraj Slafkovsky was so wound up that he couldn’t complete a dump-in on the first shift.
Slafkovsky wanted so desperately to block Rasmus Dahlin’s effort that skated right on past him and into the corner on one knee while Dahlin went to the net to score. Slafkovsky had such a difficult night that it is assumed he was injured at some point.
Mike Matheson took an uncharacteristic penalty of four minutes for high-sticking on a play that was behind the action. Matheson never behaves like this after the play is moved up the ice. The Sabres scored on the subsequent power play.
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The Canadiens tried to find that sweet spot between flat and overly excited. However, if a player hasn’t been in this moment before, it can be difficult to find it. Think back to the Florida Panthers last playoffs, and their textbook control all over the ice. It was predictable and effective in their championship wins. They never seemed rattled ever.
The Canadiens are trying to find that controlled exuberance. Only one way exists to find the right chemistry — play the important games. This one will serve as a reminder through the upcoming years of what not to do.
Chaos also decides so much in hockey. The bounces can cause so much damage. Bowen Byram threw the puck at the net with no power on it, but just in front of the goal it hit Matheson. That caused Jakub Dobes to lose track of the puck, and Zach Benson had an easy tap-in for 3-3.
And even though the score was tied at the halfway mark, the truth was that the game was an absolute rout in favour of the Sabres. The Expected Goals was 4.55 to 1.59, and the shots on goal were 21-8. When Buffalo took the lead at 4-3 on the power play with a Jack Quinn blast, it felt inevitable.
The Sabres kept piling on. It was a night that the Canadiens broke down defensively completely. It’s difficult to know what Buffalo did to figure it out, but the Canadiens have only until Monday night to come up with a game plan, or the season is over.
This one feels a little different than Tampa. Game 6 of that series was close and it felt like anyone’s to win in Game 7. This one feels like Montreal has to get some momentum back and to figure out large swaths of hockey where they are getting dominated.
Game 7 does not look in their favour at the moment. This is the ultimate test for head coach Martin St. Louis. He has to get his team prepared to turn around an Expected Goals night of 7.50 to 2.05 favouring the Sabres. That was the worst the Canadiens have looked since November. They turned it around then. They have one game to turn it around now.
Wilde Cards
Before the Sabres series began, it said here that the entire narrative would change from the Tampa Bay Lightning series. The Lightning came to play defence in a highly-structured style. They always tried to be on the proper side of the puck.
The Lightning line-up was top heavy, but not deep. Their best players were among the best in the world, such as Nikita Kucherov. Their best line was one of the only lines to have a 100-goal season, but their roster very much fell off by the third line. That’s what happens when the top players demand The Canadiens depth players had to carry them, and they did. It also meant the Canadiens top line had to be content to simply eat minutes and try to keep the game neutral during their difficult matchup.
This led to a lot of criticism for the top line against Tampa, and a lot of praise for the most dominant line of the first series of Kirby Dach, Alexandre Texier and Zachary Bolduc.
Against the Sabres, the matchups have altered completely. Before the Sabres changed their lines for Game 6, Montreal was winning the top line battle in a massive way. The Suzuki line has 16 points in the series.
The top line of Buffalo was destroyed for five games. Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs had four points. The Sabres top line had an Expected Goals share of 31 per cent. Thompson was -7. Tuch was -8. Krebs was -5.
Tuch didn’t have a single point all series after getting seven against Boston. Krebs also had no points. Success is all about the level of competition a player faces, and the top line was overmatched, until they changed it on Saturday night.
In the meantime, it was the Sabres depth that took the series to seven games. Zach Benson, Josh Doan and even Konsta Helenius have enjoyed the Canadiens depth players as opposition.
This is why it’s important to remember that, over the course of a series or even a season, the best team is the team where every player is in his proper seat. He looks across from him at the face-off circle and says to himself “I’m better than this guy”.
With three wins each, this is still not decided. Whether Montreal wins the round or not, the battle for the organization doesn’t change. The fight all through the line-up remains — that every player is in their proper seat.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you on after each Canadiens game.
