Canadiens win – Montreal survived a brutal middle stretch, won overtime of Game 7 on Alex Newhook’s second postseason winner, and advanced to the Eastern Conference Final after Jakub Dobes’ big saves in Buffalo.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Canadiens didn’t just win Game 7 on Monday. They won it the hard way, watching a two-goal lead slip away as the Sabres leaned harder and harder into the pressure.
Jakub Dobes kept them upright in overtime. stopping Zach Benson and Tage Thompson as the game threatened to vanish for Montreal.. Then Alex Newhook took over at full speed—storming down the ice. taking a lead pass from Alex Carrier. drawing the defenders in toward the net for Jake Evans. and using Rasmus Dahlin as a screen.. The puck knuckled past Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for Newhook’s second Game-7-winning goal of these playoffs.
“I was just doing my job,” Dobes said afterward. “Their fans like to chant my name, so I like that, too. Thanks for that. That was giving me fire because I like when you’re the villain when you’re in this situation.”
Newhook summed up the moment in a single feeling.. “A little bit more relief,” he said, explaining how this Game 7 ended differently from the one against Tampa Bay Lightning.. In that earlier win. he scored to make it 2-1 Canadiens with 9:57 to play in the third period—then had to wait out the rest of the game.. This time, it ended quickly after his winner.
With the overtime victory, Montreal surged into the Eastern Conference Final, becoming the only team of the four left standing to have not won its division this season.
The path that brought them there has become its own storyline inside hockey’s usual math.. Their opponent in the next round will come from a familiar, high-expectation group.. The Colorado Avalanche—who won their division by nine points—will face the Vegas Golden Knights.. Vegas clinched the Pacific Division. the one Connor McDavid had dubbed the “pillow fight” after Edmonton’s captain coined the phrase in March.
On the other side of the bracket, the Carolina Hurricanes won the Metropolitan Division by 15 points and have been idle for the last 10 days after completing their second sweep of these playoffs. It’s also their fourth consecutive appearance in the Eastern Conference Final.
Montreal’s leap has been louder because of where it started.. The Canadiens beat the 50-win, Atlantic Division champion Sabres after dispatching the veteran, 106-point Lightning.. At 25.8 years old on average. Montreal is the youngest team to make it this far in the playoffs since the 1993 Stanley Cup champion Canadiens did.
It’s hard not to hear that word—young—in every corner of the building when you watch this team, because it was the excuse they lived with for long stretches of 96 games this season. But coach Marty St. Louis refused to let age be an answer.
“What we’re going through right now, you can’t buy that,” St.. Louis said.. “It’s amazing.. I’m so happy for the players to live that.. It’s unbelievable to play in the NHL as a player. but to get to live these do-or-die situations in terms of moving on or you’re done. scoring the big goal in the overtime. that feeling that a player has. it’s unbelievable.. I’m so happy that they’re getting to live that.”
St.. Louis also spoke directly about the way people looked at their roster.. “It’s easy to just use the age as a crutch,” he said.. “Two years ago, we know that we lacked experience.. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t advance and mature.. So. I feel like the process that we have in place. the environment. and the mindset. I think it’s allowed us to grow no matter what. how old we are.”
For Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki, the win carried the weight of distance. Roughly 30 minutes after Newhook scored, Suzuki called it “a long journey.” Then he pushed back against the idea that it has been a sudden, random turnaround.
“There’s been a lot of different steps,” Suzuki said, adding that the group’s progress has actually felt linear.. “We traded for Newy. we traded for (Kirby Dach). ” he said. while acknowledging that the team’s record shows those moves were made in reverse order.. “We drafted really well.. A lot of studs through the draft that had an impact right away. so that really put our process further in motion.. And ever since (coach) Marty (St.. Louis) came (in February 2022). we had a belief we could be a really good team really quickly. and guys have really bought into how we play and everything that Marty preaches.. It’s really cool to be in this situation this fast, being such a young team.. We’re just having a lot of fun and we just want to keep the journey going.”
There were moments Monday that made the “journey” feel fragile.. Montreal looked in control early, helped by Phillip Danault and Zachary Bolduc scoring first to give them early structure.. But the Canadiens’ two-goal lead didn’t last; they defended spectacularly well through the first period. then spent too much time defending through the second and the third.
At 13:33 into the third period, Dahlin scored to make it 2-2, and it looked like the game might tip away for good. The Sabres’ second-period momentum surged after Mattias Samuelsson banked one off Jordan Greenway at 13:19 of that frame.
Dobes then stopped the tide from becoming a flood. He stole away sure goals from Alex Tuch and Tage Thompson in the final minute of the second period, and he made 16 more saves before Newhook scored to make it 3-2 Montreal.
Even the scoring threats had sharp edges for the Canadiens. Josh Anderson missed the second of two breakaways and pinged the cross bar in the middle of the chaos.
And when Buffalo finally cracked, it felt like everything the Sabres had pushed for came down to one mistake. Sabres coach Lindy Ruff didn’t sugarcoat it. “It hurts,” Ruff said. “For the team, it hurts. That pain will go away, but I won’t let this one game define the season we had.”
Ruff pointed to how abruptly Buffalo’s season turned.. Monday’s Game 7 defeat followed a stretch where the Sabres endured 14 playoff-less ones.. He wanted the team to “just bleeping go,” and they did, starting Dec.. 9 onward.. They notched the first of 10 straight wins, then followed it with a league-leading 29 over the final 43 games of the season.
They pushed far enough to make the Canadiens pay for their own desperation too. Buffalo crushed Montreal 8-3 in Game 6, then nearly extinguished them in Game 7.
The contrast with the Canadiens is stark in how both teams arrived at this stage. For St. Louis, the key has been learning what it takes to play through pressure.
“Game 7 is about finding a way,” St. Louis said. “And that’s what we did.”
It was the Canadiens’ first Game 7 overtime win on the road in a game in their 117-year history. It was also the second time in these playoffs they’d found a way to win on this kind of night.
The Canadiens’ season didn’t always look like this.. They were still learning how to play through the 2022-23 season.. In 2023-24, they played—and lost—the most one-goal games in the NHL.. They entered 2024-25 just trying to stay in the mix before an unforseeable run after the 4 Nations Face-Off carried them to the playoffs. only to be run over by the Washington Capitals in five games.
Now they’re in the final four.
Youth was the baked-in excuse. What St. Louis wanted instead was ownership. And after Newhook scored, that ownership looked real—fast, young, and relentless.
“We have a special group,” Josh Anderson said.
Newhook, asked about what Montreal still has, leaned on the way the whole team plays.. “I think we got all the pieces,” he said.. “We’re a team that plays with a lot of pace.. I think when we’re playing our style, we’re a really hard team to play against for everyone.. We’re a deep team.. In playoffs you need to have depth and you need to be able to get something from everyone in the lineup.. I think we’ve had that from the start of the playoffs up until now. and Dobes is playing really well.. We’re confident in him, and we’re confident in everyone in the room.. I think we know what we’re capable of and we’re excited to keep it rolling.”
Montreal Canadiens Buffalo Sabres Game 7 overtime Alex Newhook Jakub Dobes Nick Suzuki Marty St. Louis Eastern Conference Final