Montreal had this one tucked away. Then, in barely a minute of third-period hockey, it was gone — and the Montreal Canadiens had to win the same game twice on Tuesday night at the Bell Centre, finally beating the Buffalo Sabres 4-3 in a shootout after surrendering a 3-1 lead they had spent two periods building.
Zachary Bolduc scored the decisive goal in the shootout for the second straight game, according to the Associated Press report carried by TSN and theScore, capping a night that swung from comfortable to frantic and back again. Cole Caufield and Alexandre Texier also scored in the shootout for Montreal, while Tage Thompson was the lone Buffalo scorer before Jack Quinn missed and opened the door for Bolduc to finish it.
Two periods of control
For 40 minutes, this looked like a routine home win. Buffalo actually struck first — and did it on the game's first shot, just 2:16 in, when Olen Zellweger's point shot deflected off Montreal defenseman Adam Engstrom and past Jacob Fowler. It was a fluky way to fall behind, and to Montreal's credit, nobody panicked.
Lane Hutson tied it at 14:28 of the first period, snapping a shot past a screened Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen in the final seconds of a five-on-three power play for his first goal of the season. Juraj Slafkovsky and Caufield picked up the assists — a preview of how the scoresheet would look all night, because Montreal's young core was everywhere in this one.
Caufield put the Canadiens ahead 1:19 into the second period, finishing a feed from Slafkovsky, who had taken a short drop pass from captain Nick Suzuki. Then, with 50 seconds left in the period, Hutson produced the highlight of the night: carrying in from the blue line, he slid a no-look backhand pass to Josh Anderson, who fired into an open net to make it 3-1. Hutson and Caufield each finished with a goal and an assist, Slafkovsky had two assists, and Montreal went to the second intermission in complete command.
Sixty-one seconds that changed everything
And then the third period started, and Buffalo remembered it had a say in this. Josh Norris pulled the Sabres within one at 4:24, bouncing a point shot off Engstrom — a rough night for the young defenseman, who had two goals go in off him at opposite ends of the game. Just 61 seconds later, at 5:25, Zellweger struck again, converting his second of the night on a wrist shot through traffic to tie it 3-3.
Two goals in 61 seconds. A two-goal lead, a rocking building and a tidy win all evaporated before some fans had settled back into their seats. It is the kind of collapse that can define a young team in the wrong way — which is exactly why how Montreal responded matters more than the collapse itself.
The Canadiens did not fold. They steadied, they got the game to overtime, and they got it to a shootout — the same script as Saturday, when Bolduc scored in the sixth round to beat Detroit 1-0. There is something developing here: a young team learning, in real time, how to win games it has already tried to give away. That is not a skill you can practice. You either survive these nights and grow from them, or you do not.
The goaltending story underneath
The strangest number of the night belongs to Fowler. The 21-year-old made only 14 saves — in his third consecutive start — because Montreal controlled the puck so thoroughly, outshooting Buffalo by a wide margin. At the other end, Luukkonen was the busier and, for long stretches, the better goaltender, stopping 35 shots to drag a game Buffalo had little business salvaging all the way to a shootout. Without him, the third-period rally never gets a chance to matter.
Fowler got the start ahead of Jakub Dobes, who opened the season as Montreal's No. 1 but has struggled early, according to TSN's game coverage. Fowler, coming off a 30-save shutout of Detroit on Saturday, did not need to be spectacular on Tuesday — he needed to be calm after the roof nearly came off in the third, and in overtime and the shootout, he was. Montreal also played without defenseman Mike Matheson, who is day to day with a lower-body injury.
For Buffalo (3-3-1), the point is real consolation: Zellweger's two goals, two assists each from Beck Malenstyn and Mattias Samuelsson, and a comeback on the road against a team that had dominated for two periods. But the Sabres have now lost three of their last four, per Reuters, and moral victories wear thin quickly in the Atlantic Division. This was also the first meeting between the teams since Montreal eliminated Buffalo in the second round of last spring's playoffs — a little extra sting for the visitors, who came within one shootout goal of a measure of revenge.
What it means
Montreal improves to 3-2-1 and has won two straight, both in shootouts, both finished by Bolduc. That is a fun trivia note and, quietly, a meaningful one: shootouts are coin flips, but a team that keeps winning them starts to believe the coin is loaded in its favor. The bigger test comes immediately — the Canadiens are back in action Wednesday against the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena, with Dobes expected back in net, according to TSN.
The lesson of Tuesday is not that Montreal is flawless. A contender does not give up two goals in 61 seconds at home with a game in hand. The lesson is that this group — Hutson dancing at the blue line, Caufield finishing, Slafkovsky dealing, a 21-year-old in net refusing to blink — is learning to win the messy ones. In October, that is worth more than a clean 3-1 win nobody remembers by November. For more hockey, see our coverage of Connor McDavid's 800th game and the rest of the night on the Previously sports hub.