After a long break for the Olympics, the Montreal Canadiens were back on Bell Centre ice to shake off the rust with a Thursday night matchup against the New York Islanders. Allowing a late goal to tie the game sent them to overtime, and while the one point they earned for getting there is valuable, they left one more on the table when Jean-Gabriel Pageau put home the game-winner at three-on-three.
An unfortunate end, to be sure, but there were some encouraging performances in the game as a whole. How about Noah Dobson, for instance, who looked like he’s ready to take off during this stretch run.
Can't just flip pucks out and go for a line change when Hutson and Dobson are out there.
— Matt Drake (@DrakeMT) February 27, 2026
Lane sends Dobson and he goes glove side. 1-0 #Habs pic.twitter.com/I5sG43iBPP
This was a truly excellent display of vision and hockey IQ by Dobson and Lane Hutson. The Islanders think they’re safe to go for a line change with a high flip towards the Habs zone. Dobson immediately recognizes the space on the left side and heads up ice, which allows Hutson to send him unchallenged into the offensive zone when he gloves down the attempted dump-in. With Nick Suzuki driving the net, Dobson has multiple ways to make this a high-danger scoring chance, but he just finishes it himself with a well-placed shot. It is a lot of simple things, but executed so well that the result of a goal was seemingly inevitable.
Dobson was considered by many as a player with an outside shot of representing Canada this year. Most roster projections didn’t have him making it, nor did Hockey Canada in the end, but his name was out there as a suggestion. While it wasn’t quite a snub for him to be omitted from the roster, seeing his performance on Thursday makes you wonder if that omission – and of course playing against his former team – motivated him to really step up in the stretch run for the Habs.
We’ve long expected names like Lane Hutson and Cole Caufield to be the highly-motivated contributors in the sprint to the playoffs. If Dobson is going to match their expected pace in trying to prove something, it could be huge for this team’s place in the standings come playoff time. He’s already passed his point total from last season in 13 less games, and there could not be a better time for him to heat up even more as the Habs try to keep pace in a very tight Atlantic Division.
Hopefully the team as a whole can put things together a little more neatly than they did against New York, but it never hurts to have a handful of players out to make a name for themselves.
Click the play button below to listen to your full Bottom Six Minutes, also available wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back on Saturday night, when the Habs will host the Washington Capitals before heading off for a western road trip.
