Jordan Greenway of the Buffalo Sabres celebrates scoring his team's third goal of the night against the Montréal Canadiens in their Game 1 win of their second-round playoff series.Rebecca Villagracia/Getty Images
After all the clamour, hype and hope that accompanied their seven-game series win over the Tampa Bay Lightning – to say nothing of the inadvertent pressure that comes with being the last Canadian team standing in this year’s playoffs – it’s safe to say the Montreal Canadiens suffered something of a reality check on Wednesday in Buffalo.
The Sabres skated to a 4-2 victory in the series opener in the first post-season meeting between the teams in 28 years, but after a fast start which saw Buffalo score twice on its first five shots, the Canadiens were always playing a frustrating game of catch-up.
“I think we kind of just shot ourselves in the foot there,” said captain Nick Suzuki, who got his team on the board with a power-play goal with 44 seconds remaining in the first. “We were down 2-0 and just trying to claw our way back. And I thought we played a pretty good game after that.”
For Montreal, playing from behind is an unusual situation to be in this postseason. The team never trailed by more than a goal in any of their seven first-round games against the Lightning – all of which were decided by one goal.
Worse, the team injected new life into Buffalo’s once-dormant power play. Having managed just one goal on 24 opportunities in their first-round win over Boston – an anemic 4.2-per-cent conversion rate – the Sabres were able to cash two of their three chances on Wednesday.
If there is a silver lining, it’s that the Canadiens offence managed to generate 28 shots – more than three times as many as they registered in Sunday’s Game 7 win in Tampa.
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“I liked that we battled,” said head coach Martin St. Louis. “It wasn’t the start that we wanted, in the game, in the series, but we’re going to keep going.”
Suzuki’s goal cut the Buffalo lead in two going into the first intermission, but any momentum that the 24-time Stanley Cup winners were hoping to gain was quickly snuffed out in the second period.
The Atlantic Division-champion Sabres – who had surged to the crown with a 30-point improvement year over year – broke the game open with goals from Jordan Greenway and then Bowen Byram on the power play before the 11-minute mark had elapsed. Byram’s goal – his fourth of the playoffs – came on the Sabres’ ninth shot of the game, as Jakub Dobes, who had saved 28 of 29 shots in eliminating Tampa, managed just 12 saves on 16 shots.
But with their resilience under the microscope – Buffalo could seemingly have capitalized further but twice hit the post instead – Montreal responded. Kirby Dach followed up on his own rebound, and found the net behind Alex Lyon, who finished with 26 saves on 28 shots.
Dach said that the team learned some valuable lessons in the loss, the kind that may stand them in good stead for the rest of the series.
Nick Suzuki and his Montreal Canadiens teammates fell into an early two-goal deficit in their second-round opener against the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night.Jeffrey T. Barnes/The Associated Press
“I think Tampa and [Buffalo] kind of play maybe a similar neutral zone, where they’re kind of compact in there, and it’s hard to maneuver our way through it,” he said. “And I think in the third we were able to kind of find a way through it a little bit easier and understand that sometimes it’s not really the pretty play that gets it done, it’s just about going north and getting it on the forecheck.”
Uncorking 11 of their 28 shots in the third, the Canadiens came on hard down the stretch, and offer hope against a team that has seen its confidence soar of late, thanks to a first series win in 19 years.
“There’s a 10-12 minute in the second that I feel like we got hurt in that time,” St. Louis said. “And you’re not just going to dominate Buffalo the whole game. It’s a game of momentum and to make sure that when we lose the momentum is to one get it back as fast as you can, but two, don’t get hurt too bad and when that happens, and I feel that was the difference in the game.”
With Game 1 in the books, the two teams will now turn their attention to Friday’s Game 2 in Buffalo.