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Three teams entered the NHL playoffs with a chance to win Canada’s first Stanley Cup since 1993. But only one remains. So, from the failing hands of Edmonton and Ottawa, we now throw the torch to Montreal as the Canadiens prepare to open their second-round series against the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET.
Here are a few things to know about this exciting matchup and how these two teams got here.
Despite the fact each team had 106 points in the regular season, Tampa Bay was a huge favourite in the first round against Montreal. With three-time NHL scoring champion Nikita Kucherov leading a star-studded cast of forwards and former Vezina and Conn Smythe trophy winner Andrei Vasilevskiy in net, the Lightning featured a battle-hardened core that won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and ’21 and reached the final in ’22. The Canadiens missed the playoffs from 2022 to 2024, and their key players’ post-season experience amounted to a five-game defeat to Washington last year.
And yet, coach Martin St. Louis’s boys went toe-to-toe with Tampa and then some, beating them in a seven-game series where every game was decided by one goal and four went to OT. Montreal stole Game 7 in Tampa on Sunday 2-1 despite being outshot 29-9, with young Canadiens goalie Jakub Dobes once again outduelling the far more accomplished Vasilevskiy.
After an NHL-record 14 seasons without qualifying for the post-season, the surprising Sabres posted the best record in the league from mid-December on to win the Atlantic Division with 109 points (fourth overall) and make their long-awaited return to the playoffs. They dispatched Boston in six games last Friday for the franchise’s first playoff series victory since 2007.
The Sabres’ coach back then was Lindy Ruff, who is also the coach now. Buffalo fired him in 2013 and he made stops in Dallas and New Jersey while the struggling Sabres cycled through six other bench bosses before bringing Ruff back last season.
How do the Montreal Canadiens match up against the Buffalo Sabres?
No disrespect to Colorado vs. Minnesota, Vegas vs. Anaheim, or Carolina vs. Philadelphia, which are all solid series in their own right. But they can’t match this one, which features two up-and-coming young teams with extremely passionate fan bases yearning for a championship.
The Canadiens captured their (and Canada’s) last Stanley Cup way back in 1993, when they swept Buffalo in the second round after the Sabres swept Boston with the legendary May Day (!!!) overtime goal. Buffalo has never won the Cup, reaching the final in 1975 and 1999, when it lost to Dallas on Brett Hull’s infamous foot-in-the-crease goal in triple overtime of Game 6. The Sabres coach that year? Yep, Lindy Ruff.
Canadian hockey fans don’t agree on much. But, if we’re being objective, I think we agree on this: the best crowds in the NHL are at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Meanwhile, Buffalo’s fans are among the best in the United States.
Plus, there will be an interesting dynamic at the KeyBank Center, which is just a few kilometres from the border and always peppered with a healthy amount of (very loud) Canadiens fans whenever the Habs are in town. Remember that viral moment in the first round when the mic cut out during the Canadian anthem in Buffalo (which plays it before every game, regardless of the opponent) and the crowd jumped in to sing it? Well, let’s just say neither side is going to wait for an equipment malfunction this time.
See how the Bell Centre erupted after Suzuki’s Game 7 goal
Twenty-six-year-old captain Nick Suzuki is one of the premier two-way centres in the game. The Selke Trophy favourite racked up a career-high 101 points this season to finish sixth in the scoring race and become the first Canadiens player in 40 years to reach the century mark in points.
Twenty-five-year-old winger Cole Caufield was the first Hab in 36 years to reach the 50-goal plateau, potting 51 to finish second in the Rocket Richard Trophy race to Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon. And fantastic 22-year-old defenceman Lane Hutson, the reigning NHL rookie of the year, had 78 points and 66 assists this season, matching Larry Robinson’s club record for assists by a blueliner.
Montreal also has a potential finalist for this year’s Calder Trophy in Ivan Demidov, a 21-year-old winger who had 19 goals and 62 points this season. And 22-year-old forward Juraj Slafkovsky has a knack for the big stage: the MVP of the 2022 Olympic men’s hockey tournament has 11 goals in 13 Olympic games for Slovakia and potted a hat trick in Game 1 against Tampa Bay.
Suzuki (one goal, five assists) and Hutson (two goals, four assists) led the Canadiens with six points each against the Lightning, while Caufield had a goal and three assists. But the story of the series was the 24-year-old Dobes, who allowed just four goals on 102 shots over the final three games against a Tampa team stacked with dangerous scorers.
WATCH | Canadiens boast high-end talent like Caufield & Suzuki:
5 things you need to know about the Habs ahead of the playoffs
It’s fair to be skeptical about a team that was so bad for so many years and was still near the bottom of the Eastern Conference at the Christmas break. But the Sabres have been on a tear ever since, led by one of the best defencemen in the league and a deep group of forwards.
Up front, Buffalo is powered by a pair of highly skilled and very large men in Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch. The six-foot-six, 220-pound Thompson scored 40 goals this season and had a strong playoff debut against Boston with two goals and five assists. The six-foot-four, 219-pound Tuch scored 33 goals in the regular season and potted four more against the Bruins while tying Thompson for the team lead with seven points.
But the real key for the Sabres is Rasmus Dahlin, their 26-year-old ace defenceman. Big (six-foot-three, 204 pounds) and extremely skilled at all aspects of the game, the former No. 1 overall draft pick had 19 goals and a career-high 74 points this season despite unimaginable turmoil in his personal life. Dahlin made several trips back home to Sweden to be with his fiancée, Carolina, who received a life-saving heart transplant after spending weeks on life support. In January, she revealed that she was pregnant when her heart failed, and that the baby did not survive.
The Sabres went into the playoffs with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen as their No. 1 goalie, but he lost the job after giving up four goals, including a bouncer from the red line, in just over two periods in Game 2 against Boston. Fiery journeyman Alex Lyon picked up the starting role and ran with it, going 3-1 with a sparkling 1.14 goals-against average for the series.
One red flag for the Sabres is their power play, which ranked in the bottom half of the league this season with a 19.5 per cent success rate and was horrendous against the Bruins. Buffalo scored just one goal in 24 power-play attempts (4.2 per cent), and that goal (in Game 5) ended an 0-for-39 cold streak that lasted 26 days.
