The Montreal Canadiens secured the victory on Thursday night against the Columbus Blue Jackets thanks to a pinpoint accurate wrist shot by Cole Caufield in an exciting overtime period. In case you missed it, here it is the whole shift that led to the finishing score.
It’s already Caufield’s second overtime goal this season, and his sixth overall in his young career. It’s well known that if you give Caufield time and space that he will find the slightest small opening and whip the puck into it, and three-on-three overtime certainly offers him that opportunity.
Let’s dig a bit into the numbers. Ever since the sudden-death overtime rule was introduced for the 1983-84 season, the Canadiens have won 144 times during the regular season and Caufield is already among the top scorers for Montreal in those conditions. I should point out that overtime periods were five-on-five until the 1999-2000 season when it changed to four-on-four, and down to three-on-three the for the 2015-16 season. The rule changes were put in place to try to end games in overtime rather than go to shootouts. Caufield certainly has the odds in his favour to continue climbing up the all-time leaderboard, and you certainly won’t hear the fans complain about that.
Here are the all-time leaders for goals in overtime during the regular season:
10- Max Pacioretty
7- Saku Koivu
6- Alex Galchenyuk, Cole Caufield
4- P.K. Subban, Jeff Petry, David Desharnais
3- Brian Savage, Bobby Smith, Paul Byron, Andrei Markov, Mats Naslund, Ben Chiarot, Alex Kovalev, Stephan Lebeau, Vincent Damphousse, Sheldon Souray, Guy Carbonneau, Tomas Plekanec.
2- Ilya Kovalchuk, Andrei Kostitsyn, Craig Rivet, Michael Ryder, Patrice Brisebois, Mike Hoffman, Roman Hamrlik, Mike Ribeiro, Max Domi, Oleg Petrov, Brian Gionta, Josh Gorges.
1- 43 players scored once.
Among the players who scored one overtime goal with the Canadiens was Donald Brashear in 1995, who skillfully deflected the puck off of an opponent’s face and into the goal, like a trick shot on a pool table.
