The Canadiens are being outplayed by the Hurricanes. You can see it in the shot differential, where the Canes held a 38-13 advantage in Game 3. You could see it just by watching, as the Habs struggled again and again to move the puck up the ice without ceding possession to a ruthless Carolina defense. And you can see it—barely—in the conclusion: 3-2 Canes in overtime, to take a 2-1 series lead.
Game 3 followed much the same script as Game 2, down to the final score and overtime outcome. But for all the ways that Carolina dominated the run of play, Monday night was in reality as tight as playoff hockey gets. The Canes peppered Jakub Dobes and a few got through; their offense is built on the laws of probability. Montreal, with less volume, required some individual inspiration and luck to keep pace. Maybe the most extraordinary part is that they did, for 74 minutes.
Shayne Gostisbehere opened the scoring for the Canes, and Taylor Hall snagged one before intermission, in a period where the Habs were outshot 15-5. But in between those two, Mike Matheson, the old dog on D, got Montreal on the board. He was in the right place at the right time to receive a pass up high after some grimy play beneath the net, and with no bodies between him and Freddie Andersen, Matheson lasered a shot into the near-side corner that the Canes goalie could not catch.
The only goal in the second period came from Montreal's best scorer and one of their very best passers, working in reversed roles. Cole Caufield scored 51 goals this year—19 more than the top Hurricane—and Lane Hutson picked up 66 assists—13 more than the top Hurricane. Moving into the attacking zone in tandem on the power play, Caufield made a short dish to Hutson, Hutson gave it back, and with the defense still trying to get its bearings Hutson cut to the far side of the net. Caufield found him with a longer pass right to the doorstep, where the 22-year-old had no problem finishing.
Hutson would later take the blame for the turnover that led to the game-winning goal, but this play, as well as his end-to-end pass to Nick Suzuki for a failed breakaway at the start of OT, demonstrated where Montreal can still find an occasional edge over the Canes—even if they struggle to assert themselves most of the time.
With 11:30 to go in the third, it looked like the Canadiens earned the kind of lucky break that can affect the whole course of a series. With a rare bout of sustained O-zone possession, Noah Dobson found some space out wide and tried to center it into the slot. A diving Nikolaj Ehlers got in the way, but all he accomplished was deflecting the puck through Andersen's five-hole for an apparent 3-2 Habs lead.
Or not. The Canes saw something from much, much earlier in the sequence, and they challenged for offside. The replay revealed that Caufield crossed the blue line just a hair before he should have. The goal went off the board, Montreal didn't find the net again, and when Andrei Svechnikov fired a shot through traffic 14 minutes into overtime, the Habs were staring at a 2-1 deficit. It was pretty darn close, but there's nothing to argue with.
For the Hurricanes, their 10th win of the postseason makes this their deepest run since they won the Cup in 2006, despite four other conference final appearances in the years since. This fifth time is certainly their best chance yet to get over the hump. But the mood in Montreal's locker room remained optimistic, almost like head coach Martin St. Louis and the older guys were trying to keep the less experienced players from getting down in the dumps over the last two defeats.
"We're two shots away from being up 3-0 in the series," Matheson said. That's technically true and also irrelevant. More pressingly, they're two losses away from this series being over.
