2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs – Eastern Conference Final
Game 4: Montreal Canadiens (A3) vs. Carolina Hurricanes (M1)
CAR leads 2-1
Start time: **8:00 PM EDT / 5:00 PM PDT**
In Canada: CBC, Sportsnet (English), TVA Sports (French)
In the United States: TNT, truTV
Streaming: HBO Max, Sportsnet+
For the third consecutive game in the Eastern Conference Final, the Montreal Canadiens held the Carolina Hurricanes to two goals through 60 minutes of play. Jakub Dobeš played a hand in holding them to that total, and this was the first time in the series that you could say the Hurricanes deserved to score more, amassing 4.11 expected goals through 40 minutes of play. In the first two games Carolina held a lot of possession and did little with it, but they were more dangerous in the first game at the Bell Centre, with 32 scoring chances and 14 of the high-danger variety through two periods.
That edge disappeared in the third however as the Hurricanes played a very conservative style with the game tied at two goals apiece. Montreal pounced on that tentative style to put a third goal on the board, though it was ultimately wiped out on an offside review. Carolina taking its foot off the gas following the second intermission nearly cost them on a second occasion when Nick Suzuki received a breakaway pass early in overtime on which he sent his shot wide, and a third when Mike Matheson floated the puck off the crossbar soon afterward.
With those missed opportunities the game switched. Carolina turned up the pressure deep in Montreal’s zone, and the fear of making a turnover led Montreal’s defencemen to repeatedly make the safe play of tossing the puck down the ice. When the icings began — seven from the Canadiens in a 10-minute span — the game was essentially over. It was just a matter of time before that continual offensive-zone time resulted in a goal for the Hurricanes, and it came on a shot through a screen.
Tale of the Tape
| Canadiens | Statistics | Sabres |
|---|---|---|
| 44.7% | Expected-goal share | 57.2% |
| 3.12 | Goals per game | 2.91 |
| 2.71 | Goals against per game | 1.82 |
| 24.1% | PP% | 11.1% |
| 77.4% | PK% | 93.5% |
| Alex Newhook (7) | Most goals | Logan Stankoven (7) |
| Nick Suzuki (12) | Most assists | Taylor Hall (9) |
| Nick Suzuki (16) | Most points | Taylor Hall (13) |
There’s no doubt that Montreal was outplayed on Monday night, and yet they still had their chances to win it. With two goals, a third disallowed, and several posts, they had beaten Frederik Andersen more than enough times to claim victory. If they could have only forced Andersen to deal with stopping the puck more often, we’d likely be discussing Montreal holding at least a 2-1 series lead at this point.
The team discussed the need to change their approach and just focus on getting more pucks on net before the game. However, after 12 shots in Game 2, they had just 13 in Game 3, unable to put their own plan into action. Oddly, it was Nick Suzuki, who had said the team’s poor road record was partially the result of trying to make plays that were too fancy who passed up a shot from the slot for a blind between-the-legs backhand pass to what he hoped was Cole Caufield’s stick, along with the miss on the breakaway that didn’t even test Andersen in OT. He and his teammates need to get more shots, and even an extra half-dozen might have been enough to win both Game 2 and Game 3.
Key to Montreal’s offensive game is the defencemen getting involved in the rush. The last four goals Montreal has scored have a blue-liner inscribed on the scoring line. Both goals in Game 2 came from defencemen, the disallowed goal was an own-deflection off a shot from Noah Dobson, Dobson also just failed to get enough of an Ivan Demidov pass for a tap-in on a two-on-one, and Suzuki’s breakaway was created on a two-zone pass from Lane Hutson.
The Hurricanes are well aware of that situation, which is why they’ve been putting the pressure on those defencemen at the earliest opportunity, ideally behind Montreal’s goal line. Hutson has been their main target so far, with a questionable knee, slewfoot, and an elbow to the head when he’s trying to play the puck in his zone part of their body of work on the Canadiens’ top defenceman. The key for Montreal is to work through that physical approach, keeping the puck moving and making plays, and not getting frozen in fear of making the wrong play as they did in the last overtime period.
