First period
- Just 96 seconds into the game, the Canadiens have the lead, their first of the series. After a stumble from a Sabres defenceman, Alex Newhook collected the puck, and after the play shifted to the other side of the ice, he got the tip on Kaiden Guhle’s shot to get the puck past Alex Lyon.
Lane Hutson gets it to Guhle, and Alex Newhook gets a tip to make it 1-0 #Habs
— Matt Drake (@drakemt.bsky.social) May 8, 2026 at 8:14 PM
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- I did say Newhook would be a player to watch after a solid Game 1.
- Guhle is now up to five assists in eight games and a couple of minutes, ranking fifth on Montreal’s scoring list.
- Phillip Danault wins the faceoff, Josh Anderson cuts across the face of Lyon, and Mike Matheson flips a wrist shot to the near-side top corner to make it 2-0 Canadiens.
Mike Matheson just rips one through traffic and it's 2-0 #Habs
— Matt Drake (@drakemt.bsky.social) May 8, 2026 at 8:19 PM
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- A pass from Noah Dobson misses Juraj Slafkovský, but Nick Suzuki recognizes that’s it’s going to bank behind the Sabres defence and gets onto it for a semi breakaway. He delays a second before collecting the puck, maybe hoping Lyon would lunge for it, but that doesn’t leave him much space for a deke, and Lyon gloves the puck.
- Matheson tosses the puck across the ice to Alexandre Carrier, but it’s in his feet with Jason Zucker standing right there. Zucker gets the puck, and Carrier has to haul him down.
- The Sabres are carrying momentum out of the power play, but Jakub Dobeš is standing tall.
- Tage Thompson makes a great defensive play to deflect the puck away from Hutson on a two-on-one with Jake Evans. As Hutson goes to the boards, Rasmus Dahlin decides to take the chance to bury him into the boards with the puck nowhere close, and the Sabres’ captain will send his team to the penalty kill.
- A failed Sabres clear allows Cole Caufield to get the puck in the slot, but he doesn’t have quite enough space to turn the puck onto his forehand for his best shot, and Lyon makes the save.
- Buffalo is trying to shoot high on Dobeš tonight. Two shots have gone off the top of his mask already.
- Josh Doan steps into Noah Dobson trying to open up some space along the wall for Zach Benson, but he doesn’t play for the Tampa Bay Lightning, and that is interference.
- Montreal gets two shots in the nine seconds they have to work with, but will carry 1:51 of power-play time into period two.
- That was a solid period from Montreal, just like it was in Game 1, but this time the Habs have the multi-goal lead they’ve deserved from each opening frame.
Second period
- Ivan Demidov cuts to middle looking to get a shot, and among three Sabres players takes a blindside hit from Jordan Greenway. Zachary Bolduc comes on to replace Demidov, but the power play doesn’t manage any shots on net.
- Carrier goes off for the second time in the game for a hook in the hands of Thompson.
- Evans can’t quite corral a bouncing puck on an attempted breakaway pass as Dahlin has to go to the bench to get a new stick, but still manages to set up a shot from Newhook short-handed.
- Dobson gets crunched behind the net, but he made the play to get the puck around the wall, and it’s another short-handed rush for Evans and Newhook. This time Evans gets better control of the puck, and sets up Newhook’s second goal of the night.
Jake Evans with a perfect pass to Newhook driving the back post, and it's 3-0 #Habs
— Matt Drake (@drakemt.bsky.social) May 8, 2026 at 9:18 PM
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- Arber Xhekaj spends a shift whacking at Jordan Greenway, and is going to the box for slashing. I get that you want to send a message after the Demidov hit, but that’s just a gifted power play.
- The crowd boos as the Buffalo power play has trouble gaining the blue line.
- Another shot off Dobeš’s mask.
- The Sabres got three shots and still get booed for failing to score. It’s a tough crowd.
- Suzuki knocks the puck out at the blue and is about to race away on a break from his own zone, but gets tripped by Mattias Samuelsson to put Montreal up a man.
- Demidov is back, and in his regular spot.
- Montreal gets a lot of looks on the power play but can’t make the final connection.
- The Habs make a change while the puck stays in Buffalo’s zone, and all the Sabres can do is throw hits at the backs of puck-carriers and whack at hands. It’s a three-minute shift for the Sabres’ penalty-killers, but they do manage to get off the ice without their deficit growing.
- Despite being up three, the Canadiens are still pushing play in the offensive zone. Shots are 20-14 Montreal.
- Joe Veleno jumps on the ice and immediately gets involved in a neutral-zone play before his counterpart was off, and the Montreal just handed the Sabres another power play. They need to be smarter than they’ve been on that front this period.
- Sixty seconds in, the boos rain down again.
- Benson accidentally on purpose falls on Dobeš, and then lays on the ice pretending he’s hurt trying to draw a penalty. Dahlin sees his chance to come in and shove his stick in Dobeš’s face.
- Each team gets a roughing minor on the play, sending the game to four-on-four.
- The Sabres get on the board with 38 seconds to play. Benson, perfectly fine after getting murdered on his last shift, steals the puck behind Montreal’s net and then ends up with the goal.
- Two linesmen comes over and have a stern word with Benson after he skated over to chirp Dobeš after the goal, so it seems the officials are still giving warnings in the second round of the post-season.
- A rough end to period as the defencemen were a little too casual with the puck and have allowed Buffalo back into it. It should have been a silent crowd and a dejected Sabres team going into the intermission, now there’s a real chance for the Sabres to come back. Montreal will need a strong sequence of shifts in the third period to quash that momentum.
Third period
- Hutson spins and fires a shot that Lyon wasn’t prepared for and the Sabres goalie is fortunate that the puck was a few inches wide as he didn’t see it coming. Buffalo’s luck has to run out at some point.
- Tage Thompson gets a bit off-balance high in the offensive zone, and that’s a lot of mass off-axis. He spins himself into the ice, allowing Carrier to pounce on the puck and lead a two-on-one. Carrier keeps the puck and rips a shot to the far-side top corner to restore a three-goal lead. A huge goal.
Tage Thompson takes a spill, and Alexandre Carrier takes it the other way for a snipe. 4-1 #Habs
— Matt Drake (@drakemt.bsky.social) May 8, 2026 at 10:14 PM
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- Zachary Bolduc gets a one-time setup from Dobson who was behind the Buffalo net, but hit Lyon with the shot.
- The Sabres just had two zone entries that were clearly offside. The linesmen are going to make the Canadiens use a challenge to take a potential goal off the board it seems.
- Another goal-line to slot one-timer, this time Evans, but Lyon makes a strong save on this occasion.
- The Sabres get aggressive in the offensive zone, and that leads to a two-on-one for Slafkovský and Caufield. Slafkovský keeps, but doesn’t score.
- Zachary Bolduc goes down the ice chasing a loose puck. Stopped along the boards, Benson elbows him in the head, then Bowen Byram follows up with a second elbow. The referee allowed the first, but not the second.
- Caufield loads up a shot from a wide-open position in the slot on the power play, and rings it off the bottom of the crossbar and out. But he’s a lot more open in this series, so they should start to go in for him at some point.
- The Sabres get Lyon to the bench with 4:05 to play, and Suzuki makes it 5-1 with 4:01 on the clock.
- It’s the first time in the playoffs that the Canadiens have hit five goals.
- “Olé!” and “Boo!” are vying for the loudest crowd sounds in the arena, which is now about 50% empty.
- Greenway draws a cross-check from Anderson. Anderson tries to get him into take a retaliatory penalty, but he doesn’t bite.
- Benson gets a penalty for cross-checking Matheson to negate his team’s power play.
- The Habs win this game 5-1, a great game from start to finish, and even up the series by improving their playoff road record to 4-2 in the post-season.
- With the feeling-out game out of the way in the opener, the Habs have an understanding of what they will face, and this was a very encouraging game. We’ll see if they can do the same in Game 3 at the Bell Centre on Sunday.
EOTP 3 Stars
3) It’s wild how the refs buy it when guys like Thompson and Tom Wilson drop to the ice
2)
1) We’re not in Tampa anymore
