The Buffalo Sabres were a great road team this year. Only the Avalanche won more games away from home, and in the first round of the playoffs the Sabres took all three games they played in Boston by a combined score of 13-3. But Montreal, as the city proved in Game 3 of its second-round win over the Sabres, is a little bit different than your average NHL road trip.
Something like 40,000 people were in the immediate vicinity of the Canadiens' arena on Sunday night, per the TV broadcast. About half of them were inside the league's largest building—and therefore, in my experience, the loudest. The other half was crowded into the huge outdoor plaza that had to add a third giant screen to keep up with demand. Quebec hasn't been the center of the hockey universe in my lifetime, but it's still hard for me not to get romantic about French-Canadians and their game. From Maurice Richard to Marie-Philip Poulin, there is an overwhelming amount of hockey history tied to this area, and a tremendous pride in that history that fuels a rabid devotion to the teams of today.
It's a lot of pressure, and early in their careers I worried about the ability of Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki to carry the weight of this fanbase's anxieties. But as Suzuki's taken over the captaincy and Caufield's become a 50-goal scorer, they've ushered in a new era of Canadiens hockey that has blessed these fans with an unbelievable young core. Players like Juraj Slafkovsky, Lane Hutson, and Ivan Demidov could all easily play high schoolers on a teen drama filmed in Vancouver for the tax breaks. But in Montreal, they're maturing into hockey heroes. Every Habs scorer in their 6-2 win was 25 years old or younger, and the combined force of their attack, coupled with the volume of the Montreal crowd, created a scene that rattled the Sabres.
To permanently take the lead in the second period, it was Hutson doing what he does best on the power play, maneuvering to set up Caufield to do what he does best, which is finish. I love the crescendo of screams that begins to build when Hutson skates closer to the net, and the celebration that follows makes Montreal look like the NHL's biggest and best party.
The Habs cruised from this point on, and they'll return to this ice for a Game 4 that could potentially see them take a 3-1 series lead before the Sabres have a chance to regroup back on their side of the border.
“It’s a challenge, for sure,” Buffalo star Tage Thompson said. “Place was loud tonight, and you feel the energy, and you’d feel that they had momentum off of it. But that’s just something that we’ve got to get used to, something that can’t affect us, any of the outside noise."
He added, “I think we got a little too emotional tonight, too."
It's impossible to make any firm declarations when a series is 2-1. What I will say is that both these squads are especially interesting for their overall lack of playoff experience. The ceilings are very high for both the Sabres and the Habs. However, the deeper they go, the more unfamiliar the challenge gets. Buffalo has never faced anything like a Montreal playoff crowd before, and it showed. They'll get a chance to redeem themselves and hit the mute button on Tuesday, but les habitants will be more motivated than ever to make themselves heard.
