Summary
At the heart of an ugly streak of six straight losses, the Montreal Canadiens needed the awakening of their best offensive elements if they wanted to emerge from their torpor.
The performance of Martin St-Louis’ men was certainly not perfect Monday afternoon – while the Canadians lost the lead on three occasions – but the contribution of the young stars of the Habs allowed the Canadian to sign a 7-5 victory against the Buffalo Sabres.
“We needed a victory,” the Habs pilot made no secret of in a post-match press briefing. The guys continue to evolve. I know that doesn’t guarantee victory. »
Doubles from Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki as well as a three-assist performance from Juraj Slafkovsky allowed Montreal to obtain its first victory in November.
However, the outcome of this meeting could have been very different. On three occasions, Montreal was unable to hold on to a lead and the team let the Sabers come back into the game each time.
Cayden Primeau was removed after allowing five goals on 14 shots, but ultimately, the result will satisfy the Habs, who will leave Buffalo with two more points in the standings.
“It’s not an easy league, and that’s what I told the guys after the game,” St-Louis said. I told them: ‘Sometimes when I was a player, I said to myself that I never thought I would be able to play in this league again. And sometimes I told myself that I would never score a goal again in this league. And sometimes, as a young coach, you sometimes wonder if you’re going to win another game in this league. »
“The league is demanding, and sometimes it’s not how you play, it’s the result that knocks you down emotionally,” he added. But we stayed together, we continued to work on our business, and that’s a victory. We know that we have a recipe to be competitive in every game (…) It wasn’t perfect, but we played good hockey. »
There will also be a lot of positives to take from this game for Caufield, who led the NHL in goalscoring this season with 12 goals. Suzuki finished his game with three points, while young sensation Lane Hutson contributed two goals. Montreal’s numerical advantage produced two goals.
Josh Anderson, Emil Heineman and Christian Dvorak also found the back of the net in the victory. Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Peyton Krebs, Rasmus Dahlin and JJ Peterka were the scorers in the Sabers camp.
The Canadiens will return to action Thursday night to complete a four-game trip to Minnesota against the Wild.
An offensive festival
Looking for a first victory in seven games, the Habs started their match with panache. From the first minutes of play, a brilliant turning pass from Dvorak allowed Anderson to escape. The Canadiens forward opened the scoring with a precise shot into the top of the net, scoring his third goal of the campaign.
But Montreal’s lead only held out for 28 seconds. When play resumed, Thompson made a great individual play to get around Caufield, before tucking the puck between Primeau’s pads to bring everyone back to square one.
The Habs found themselves on the power play in the first minutes of the second period and the young players took charge. Defenseman Hutson took a shot from the blue line and Caufield redirected the puck to give Montreal a 2-1 lead with his 11th goal of the campaign.
Captain Suzuki got an assist on this sequence, which allowed him to reach the plateau of 300 points in the NHL, in his 389th game.
As in the first period, the St. Louis men were unable to protect their lead and this time, the Sabers only needed 19 seconds to tie the game 2-2. Much the same way as Caufield earlier, Cozens redirected a shot from Dahlin’s blue line to tie the game.
However, Montreal’s troubles did not stop there. Only 59 seconds after Cozens’ net, Krebs took advantage of the Canadians’ defensive generosity to recover the puck at the blue line and score with a good wrist shot, to give Buffalo the lead for the first time in the game.
The Canadiens played the same trick on the Sabers at the end of the period with two goals in the space of 22 seconds, a sequence that featured Suzuki and Slafkovsky. Slafkovsky first joined Suzuki with a nice two-on-one pass to allow the captain to tie the game with a sharp wrist shot.
Then a few moments later, Slafkovsky’s work in the back of the territory allowed him to give the puck to Suzuki in the slot. The latter fired a shot that escaped Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and the Canadians quickly regained control of the match 4-3. Kirby Dach also had assists on these two goals.
“He (Suzuki) scored two big goals for us,” admitted Caufield. He raised his level of play at the right times, brought us back into the game and gave us a lot of rhythm for the rest of the match, that’s for sure. »
Montreal entered the final period without rhythm and the team once again paid the price. A penalty to Jayden Struble opened the door for the Sabres, who tied the game on a powerful slapshot from Dahlin.
At this point, Montreal had had the lead on three different occasions in the game, but for a slim total of three minutes and ten seconds.
Things continued to go badly at the start of the third period. Two minutes after Dahlin’s goal, a nice breakthrough at the net from Peterka allowed him to slip the puck between Primeau’s pads to give Buffalo the lead again. Primeau was kicked out of the match during this sequence and he was replaced by Samuel Montembeaut.
This offensive-flavored match was restarted in the middle of the third period when the Canadiens responded in Buffalo. Hutson first did a nice job in the back of the territory, then he set the table for Heinement with a nice pass a few seconds later. A good shot from Heineman allowed him to tie the game 5-5 with his third goal of the season.
The Habs benefited from a numerical advantage a few moments later and it was once again the young stars who stood up. Slafkovsky got his third point of the game when he delivered the puck to Caufield at the mouth of the net with a clever pass. The young sniper from Montreal put CH back in the driver’s seat with his second goal of the match.
The sequence was contested by the Sabers due to a possible hand pass, but they were unsuccessful and the goal was awarded.
Dvorak confirmed CH’s victory in an empty net.
