News
Canadiens Edge Sabres in OT Thriller, Hurricanes Await Thursday
<p>Alex Newhook beat Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen 11:22 into overtime Monday at KeyBank Center, and the Montreal Canadiens became the youngest team to reach an NHL conference final since the 1993 Habs lifted the Stanley Cup. The 3-2 Game 7 win over the Buffalo Sabres closes a 14-game, two-series gauntlet in 30 days and sends Montreal to Raleigh for Thursday&#8217;s opener against a Hurricanes team that has not lost in eight playoff tries this year.</p>
<p>He becomes <strong>just the second skater in NHL history</strong> to score multiple Game 7 series-clinching goals in one postseason. The other was Nathan Horton in 2011, the year the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup.</p>
<h2>The Goal That Echoed 2011</h2>
<p>Newhook took a cross-ice pass from Alexandre Carrier, skated to the top of the left circle, and dropped a low wrist shot under Luukkonen&#8217;s glove. The arena, which had been the loudest building in the Eastern Conference for most of the second round, went silent inside two seconds.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a war all series long, and for it to end up being Game 7 in overtime, sometimes it just takes one shot. Coming across the line, I thought there was a shot opportunity. Great to see it find the back of the net.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That was Newhook in the postgame scrum, per the <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/montreal-canadiens-buffalo-sabres-game-7-recap-may-18-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NHL.com game recap of the Eastern Conference second-round closer</a>. He scored the Game 7 winner two weeks earlier against the Tampa Bay Lightning as well, a 2-1 result that came on an NHL playoff-record nine shots.</p>
<p>Horton&#8217;s 2011 was the template. The Boston winger scored three game-winning goals in that run, two of them Game 7s, before a hit from Vancouver&#8217;s Aaron Rome in the Cup Final ended his series. Newhook joins that list 15 years later with at least four games still on the schedule.</p>
<p>Phillip Danault opened the scoring at 4:30 of the first period when a Kaiden Guhle point shot caromed off Danault&#8217;s skate. Zachary Bolduc made it 2-0 on a power play before the period was half done. Rasmus Dahlin and Jordan Greenway answered for Buffalo.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter featured-image" style="margin:1.5em auto;text-align:center;"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://budgyapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/canadiens-beat-sabres-in-game-7-overtime-to-reach-eastern-conference-final.webp" alt="Canadiens beat Sabres in Game 7 overtime to reach Eastern Conference Final." style="width:100%;max-width:800px;height:auto;border-radius:8px;display:block;margin:0 auto;" /><figcaption style="text-align:center;font-size:0.85em;color:#888;margin-top:0.5em;">Canadiens beat Sabres in Game 7 overtime to reach Eastern Conference Final.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Two Periods, Two Different Hockey Games</h2>
<p>Through 40 minutes the Sabres held a <strong>56-26 edge in shot attempts</strong> at all strengths and a 28-17 advantage in five-on-five scoring chances. By every shot-flow metric, this read as a Buffalo win waiting to be claimed. The scoreboard, somehow, said 2-1 Montreal.</p>
<h3>Quick Start, Quiet Crowd</h3>
<p>The Canadiens opened with the road-team playbook every coach reads from. Forecheck the puck out of the home zone, cash in fast, kill the crowd. Josh Anderson chased Bowen Byram into a turnover, Alexandre Texier found Guhle at the point, and the deflection off Danault did the rest. Bolduc&#8217;s power-play goal landed eight minutes later. KeyBank Center went quiet.</p>
<h3>The Buffalo Push</h3>
<p>The second period was the best 20 minutes the Sabres played all series. Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, and Dahlin pushed the play into the Montreal zone and stayed there. Buffalo held a <strong>19-8 scoring-chance edge</strong> in the period alone. Mattias Samuelsson&#8217;s point shot deflected off Greenway for the goal that finally crept onto the board, but the work to flip the game had been done before that.</p>
<h3>Dahlin&#8217;s Equalizer</h3>
<p>By midway through the third, the Sabres had a 33-12 shot-attempt edge in Dahlin&#8217;s five-on-five minutes. The tying goal at 6:27 came off his stick, a quick-release wrister to the short side that read the way his best ones do. The captain piled up five points in Game 6 to keep the season alive; the Game 7 equalizer played like the next sentence of the same paragraph.</p>
<h2>Goaltending Saved by a Wake-Up Call</h2>
<p>Jakub Dobe&scaron; spent Monday morning skating with the fact that head coach Martin St. Louis had pulled him in Game 6 after six goals on 25 shots. The Czech rookie called it a wake-up call and stopped 37 of 39 in the only game that mattered.</p>
<p>His glove save on Thompson from inside the dot late in the second period was the night&#8217;s single biggest moment. At the other end, Luukkonen turned aside breakaways from Texier and Anderson and made back-to-back stops on Cole Caufield in the first to keep the score at 2-0.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>37 saves on 39 shots</strong> by Dobe&scaron;, after being pulled at home in Game 6</li>
<li><strong>22 saves on 25 shots</strong> by Luukkonen, with breakaway stops on Texier and Anderson</li>
<li><strong>6-0 record</strong> for Montreal in games following a regulation loss this postseason</li>
<li><strong>14 games in 30 days</strong>, the Habs&#8217; workload across two seven-game rounds</li>
</ul>
<h2>Montreal&#8217;s Roster Reads Like 1993</h2>
<p>The reference point coaches reach for when they describe these Habs is the 1993 Stanley Cup team. Per the <a href="https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/MTL/1993.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1992-93 Montreal Canadiens roster on Hockey-Reference</a>, that group won a Cup with only three players older than 30: Denis Savard at 32, Guy Carbonneau at 33, and Rob Ramage at 34. Patrick Roy was 27. Vincent Damphousse was 25. Eric Desjardins was 23.</p>
<p>This year&#8217;s roster looks similar in shape. Captain Nick Suzuki is 26. Leading scorer Caufield is 25. Top defenseman Lane Hutson is 22. Dobe&scaron; is 24. The veteran spine is Brendan Gallagher (33), Anderson (32), and Danault (32). Average roster age sits at <strong>25.8 years</strong>, the same headline figure the 1993 club carried into its opening round.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Attribute</th>
<th>1992-93 Canadiens</th>
<th>2025-26 Canadiens</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Average age at playoff opener</td>
<td>25.8 years</td>
<td>25.8 years</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Players older than 30 on opening roster</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Starting goalie age</td>
<td>27 (Roy)</td>
<td>24 (Dobe&scaron;)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Top defenseman age</td>
<td>23 (Desjardins)</td>
<td>22 (Hutson)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Series wins entering Conference Final</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Outcome</td>
<td>Stanley Cup</td>
<td>Open</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The comparison is more than story-time. It is the answer to anyone asking how a team this young is still standing in mid-May. The Habs went seven games twice in a row, have not lost back-to-back regulation contests across either round, and arrive at the conference final younger than every team that has reached this point in the last 33 years.</p>
<h2>Buffalo Heads Home With Decisions Pending</h2>
<p>The Sabres won the Atlantic Division and reached the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. Coach Lindy Ruff said one game would not define his team&#8217;s season, and the math defends him: Buffalo went 5-1 on the road this postseason. What the math does not defend is a 2-5 home record. The loudest arena in the East for most of the second round watched its team go winless on its own ice in elimination games.</p>
<p>The roster moves now stack up on the desk of general manager Kevyn Adams:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ruff is on an expiring contract, with no new deal publicly on the table</li>
<li>Tuch, the top-six winger who carried Buffalo&#8217;s secondary scoring all year, is a pending unrestricted free agent</li>
<li>The 2-5 home playoff mark at KeyBank Center is the puzzle the front office has to crack before the building is asked to host another postseason</li>
</ul>
<p>&#8220;This one game doesn&#8217;t define our season for us,&#8221; Ruff said at the podium. The summer will decide whether the next one does.</p>
<h2>Carolina, 8-0, Waits in Raleigh</h2>
<p>Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final drops Thursday at PNC Arena. The Hurricanes have not lost a playoff game since April. Carolina swept the Ottawa Senators in round one and the Philadelphia Flyers in round two, becoming the first team in NHL history to sweep its opening two best-of-seven series in a single postseason, per the <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/playoffs/carolina-hurricanes-montreal-canadiens-2026-playoff-lookahead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NHL.com lookahead at the Eastern Conference Final</a>.</p>
<h3>The 8-0 Start in Context</h3>
<p>Eight straight playoff wins to open a postseason has been done four times before. The most recent was the 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers, who ran the streak to nine before losing. No team in the modern playoff format that began in 1975 has gone <strong>16-0 to a Stanley Cup</strong>; the closest was the 1987-88 Oilers, who finished 16-2. Carolina would have to win the next eight in a row to write a brand new line of NHL history.</p>
<h3>Frederik Andersen&#8217;s Wall</h3>
<p>Frederik Andersen, the 36-year-old Carolina starter, has gone 8-0 with a <strong>1.12 GAA</strong> (goals-against average, average goals allowed per 60 minutes) and a .950 save percentage with two shutouts. He has stopped 188 of 198 shots. The two franchises have not met in the playoffs since 2002, the year Carolina&#8217;s predecessor club, the Hartford-relocated Hurricanes, reached its first Cup Final.</p>
<h3>Road Math Cuts Both Ways</h3>
<p>Montreal is 6-2 on the road this postseason; the Sabres were 5-1. The road team won five of seven games in this series, and the Habs and Sabres are a combined 11-3 away from home through two rounds. The Canadiens cannot run the same forecheck-and-kill-the-crowd template on Thursday because Carolina&#8217;s home crowd has nothing yet to silence. What Montreal has shown instead is the discipline not to lose twice in a row: six wins in six tries after a regulation loss, two seven-game survivals, and a goalie who answered a benching with a 37-save night.</p>
<p>The puck drops Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern. Montreal had two days to recover. Carolina has had nine.</p>