First period
- The broadcast talks about the struggles of Cole Caufield and Tage Thompson, and both feature on the opening goal of the game. Caufield gets the puck alone in his own slot and makes a flip toward the blue line that goes nowhere. Rasmus Dahlin ends up getting a shot as a result, and the puck bounces off the end boards and trickles right to Thompson alone at the side of the net to get an easy goal to bust his slump.
- Phillip Danault’s line gets a good chance trying to even the score, but can’t punch the puck through Alex Lyon.
- Nick Suzuki gets left alone in front. Lyon lunges out trying to get the puck and misses, but Suzuki shoots the puck off his toe as the goalie is sprawled on the ice.
- Montreal has been unfazed by the early goal, just going back to work in the offensive zone.
- Caufield is left alone near the crease this time, but only has time to spin and fire a shot at a waiting Lyon.
- The puck gets turned over at Montreal’s blue line and Josh Norris steps in Suzuki’s way to prevent the counter. Montreal has a chance to tie the game on the power play.
- Ivan Demidov is a little too amped up on the power and zipping passes that his teammates can’t corral. You can’t fault the effort, just the execution is suffering at the moment.
- Shots are 6-2 Montreal. They just need one of them to count now.
- Alex Newhook and Josh Down try to put each other in a headlock at the Sabres bench. They will both go to the box.
- Danault gets a mini break and takes a slapshot, hitting Lyon in the armpit.
- A great sequence of moves by Demidov sets up Suzuki at the opposite side of the net. The shot goes over Lyon’s shoulder and hits the crossbar. The luck the Sabres have in this series is something else.
- Newhook stays red-hot, or maybe he got that way in the altercation with Doan. Out of the box, he collects the rebound from another completely open shot, this one from Jake Evans, and pounds it off a couple of Sabres players and in to tie the game.
Jake Evans with the shot, Alex Newhook buries the rebound 1-1 in Montreal
— Scott Matla (@scottmatla.bsky.social) May 10, 2026 at 8:45 PM
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- Pretty good Mother’s Day present for his mom, who is in the crowd tonight.
- Buffalo has responded to the goal with a couple of good shifts. The Danault line counters with a shift spent in the Sabres’ zone.
- Both Dach and Bolduc skate toward Lyon to ensure he holds the puck, and a melee ensues in front of the net. The replay shows Bolduc did nothing in the scrum but get punched and end up tossed on top of Lyon, and gets a four-minute penalty. Simply absurd officiating. Hopefully the supervisor has a stern word with this crew after that completely made-up power play for Buffalo.
- Newhook kills the remaining seconds on the clock by pinning the puck on the boards. At the end of the period, the officials earn a bit of redemption by calling only Rasmus Dahlin for mixing it up once again after the whistle. After 44 seconds of four-on-four in the second period, the Canadiens will be back on the power play.
Second period
- Caufield gets set up alone at the side of the net for a potential tap into the open cage. He gets his stick pushed just as he goes to shoot and sends the puck through the crease and out the other side.
- Alex Tuch gets his arm around Kaiden Guhle’s shoulder and then tosses him down to the ice after the whistle in front of Dobeš. If getting shoved over a goalie is worth four minutes, surely that was worth two?
- He may not have scored, but Caufield just drew a penalty skating the puck in front of his crease and getting tripped by Doan.
- Jordan Greenway’s stick breaks on the penalty kill, and Montreal smells blood. After several misses shots, Hutson attacks Greenway to open things up down low, sees the chance to get his 50-goal man his redemption, and sets Caufield up with another empty-net shot, and he converts this one.
Lane Hutson sends Jordan Greenway to the Shadow Realm and Cole Caufield makes it 2-1 Habs!
— Scott Matla (@scottmatla.bsky.social) May 10, 2026 at 9:26 PM
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- Drawing the power play, then scoring on it is a solid sequence for the winger.
- Josh Anderson just scored a goal. The puck squeaked through Lyon’s pad and went over the line, with Lyon spinning to knock it to the side rather than the back of the net. The referee is right there to wave it off saying Danault hit the pad, but the puck was going in. Even if the whistle sounds, that goal counts on continuation of the play. How did the league not call in to have a look at that goal? That should be an automatic decision. Some unbelievable things happening with the officiating in this game.
- Bolduc scores Montreal’s fourth goal of the game to make it 3-1. Once again it’s the Sabres getting too aggressive now that they’re chasing the game, and Veleno is all alone to collect a puck that was chipped up the ice. Veleno shows some patience, sees Bolduc racing in, and hits for the goal.
Joe Veleno puts Logan Stanley in the spin cycle, and then Bolduc scores to make it 3-1 Montreal!
— Scott Matla (@scottmatla.bsky.social) May 10, 2026 at 9:39 PM
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- The Sabres get the puck in Montreal’s zone and Beck Malenstyn just skates right through Dobeš. That should be a five-minute major for attempt to injure, because Malenstyn was absolutely trying to remove Dobeš from this series.
- Two minutes for goalie interference. Again, absurd officiating. It should be five minutes for charging.
- They only got two minutes to work with, but made it count. Hutson sends the puck at the screen of Juraj Slafkovský, and the puck goes of Slafkovský’s stick, off his pants, and in the net.
Juraj Slafkovsky tips the Lane Hutson shot and it's 4-1 Habs!
— Scott Matla (@scottmatla.bsky.social) May 10, 2026 at 9:48 PM
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- Lyon is under siege now. The Sabres have no idea what to do to get back into this game.
- They do find a bit of foothold by getting the puck into the offensive zone, where Dach grabs Doan’s stick along the wall to give Buffalo a power play.
- Dahlin fires the puck through a screen, and it’s
5-24-2. - The Sabres are getting a lot of chances now.
- Veleno tries to cut across the front of Lyon and gets shoved into him by Dahlin. Dahlin is then upset that Veleno hit his goalie and throws a few punches. No penalty of course.
- Alex Tuch tries to lift Slafkovský’s stick and smacks him right in the face. Tuch has some words for Slafkovský for some reason, but that was a hard whack right in the nose.
- Demidov blasts a one-timer. Off the post.
- No goal, but they ensure they take a two-goal lead into the third period with all that offensive-zone time.
Third period
- Montreal is trying to kill time by curling back into their own zone and Sabres have taken the puck on two occasions when they’ve tried that.
- The referee saw Hutson interfere with Malenstyn on a counter-attack, but decided not to see that Hutson took Malenstyn’s stick in the face moments later.
- This is an extremely dangerous power play from the Sabres, and they just missed scoring a goal about three times.
- There’s a loud cheer as the penalty killed, but that was just two minutes of survival. Don’t gift them any more of those.
- Not the way the Canadiens want to see out this final period so far, with a shooting gallery in their zone. They need to focus on exits first and foremost, and work from there.
- Slafkovský’s sticks have a little magic in them. He lost it in the offensive zone, and it just prevented an icing for the second time in the playoffs.
- The Canadiens are able to launch a counter-attack. Veleno beats Lyon but hits yet another post, but Dach is there to collect the puck off the end boards and deposit it into the net.
Lyon robs Texier, but the puck falls to Kirby Dach and it's 5-2 Habs!
— Scott Matla (@scottmatla.bsky.social) May 10, 2026 at 10:40 PM
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- Things went from very dicey to a bit more comfortable just like that.
- Guhle does great work to prevent two Sabres from pulling the puck out of the corner and getting to the net, forcing them all the way back to the point instead.
- Guhle gets interfered with by Josh Norris in front of the net and goes down. As he falls, his stick gets up in Norris’s face, and it’s Guhle who goes to the box. Montreal will have to try that one next game.
- The Canadiens did a better job of keeping the lanes clogged that time, and it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the last power play.
- Newhook speeds past his man to get a puck with the net empty. He’s hooked by Dahlin so he can’t score, but one is going to be awarded to him anyway.
- Twohook, he’s known around these parts.
- Now 13 goals for Montreal in this series, and 11 in the past two games. This might be the last time we see Lyon, so a tribute to the effort of the hardest-working Sabre on the ice in this game.
- The Sabres scrum it up after a whistle in Montreal’s zone, grabbing any Hab they can find. The end result in a Canadiens power play.
- The top players are kept off the ice by St-Louis who doesn’t want to risk anything at this stage.
- The game ends with Arber Xhekaj giving Sam Carrick a pop in the jaw in the corner of Montreal’s zone, and the Habs will carry a 2-1 series lead into Tuesday’s Game 4.
EOTP 3 Stars
3) Amazing that he looks like that after retiring in 2003
2) This charge might have been even worse. Fortunate that Dobeš is alright.
1) And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling Canadiens
