SUNRISE, FLA. — It wasn’t Samuel Montembeault’s best save of the night, but it was his most important one.
Because when Montembeault stuck out his left pad to stop Sam Reinhart, he wasn’t just extending overtime and giving his Montreal Canadiens a chance to win a game they deserved to win, he was also revealing his character.
Fitting that it happened in South Florida, against the team that gave up on Montembeault in 2021.
The Panthers drafted him 77th overall in 2015, they invested in his development for more than four years, and then they waived him.
We first got a sense for what kind of character the kid from Becancour, Que., possessed when he tuned out the noise Canadiens fans were making about him upon his arrival in Montreal.
Most of them didn’t think Montembeault belonged in the NHL, but it wasn’t long before they were begging for him to become Montreal’s starter.
On Tuesday, after nearly a month away from the net he’d occupied more than any other Canadiens goaltender over the last two-and-a-half years, some of those fans were chanting Montembeault’s name as he was in the process of once again bouncing back. He rebounded from a brutal start to the season, from a stretch of games so bad it required him to accept a conditioning stint in the American Hockey League, and, most importantly, from a goal scored by Reinhart that could’ve completely undone 55 minutes of nearly perfect work he’d put in against the Panthers.
Montembeault didn’t have a chance on the power-play goal Brad Marchand scored 10:18 into the third period, but he knew there was no reason to offer Reinhart the chance to beat him just over five minutes later — with a shot from 38 feet out, from a near-impossible angle to score from.
When it went in, it could’ve sunk Montembeault and the Canadiens.
Montembeault didn’t allow it to, though, and neither did the Canadiens.
Cole Caufield immediately responded with an electrifying goal to put them on the board. Nick Suzuki tied the game with the Canadiens’ sixth six-on-five goal of the season. And then Montembeault stoned Reinhart in the opening seconds of overtime before stopping Marchand and waiting for Suzuki to eventually ice this one on the power play.
The goaltender jumped into his teammates’ arms, triumphant for the first time since Nov. 28.
“In anything in life, you can make excuses, or you can make progress, but you can’t do both,” said coach Martin St. Louis. “I think you can tell what path Monty took.”
The hard one, no doubt.
Progress is always harder to make than excuses, especially in the face of such adversity.
It takes character, work, perseverance, and one other essential ingredient.
“Mental toughness,” said Caufield. “Again, he’s been through a lot the last couple of weeks here. I know we’re very happy to have him back and he’s pumped to be back here. That was a big one for our team, and a big one for him.”
Had it ended 2-1, with Reinhart’s bad-angle shot standing up as the winner, it would’ve knocked Montembeault back to Square 1.
He had stopped 25 of 26 shots prior to that to advance out of his rut. Suzuki said after the game ended 3-2, “he made some tremendous saves tonight, looked like himself; pucks were sticking to him, he seemed more poised.” Those words would’ve fallen flat had Montembeault not made a couple more saves to end the night.
He deserved the feeling he had afterward.
To describe it, the 29-year-old said, “I jumped, I was so happy.”
The Canadiens were thrilled, too, and not just for Montembeault.
Like him, they played well enough to be in a much better position than down 2-0 with 4:59 remaining. Against the two-time defending Cup champs, a team that can drag any opponent down in the mud with them — even a rested one like the Canadiens, who had the benefit of playing the Panthers less than 24 hours after they hosted the Washington Capitals at Amerant Bank Arena — they pushed through the trenches.
That they kept pushing after taking two bullets revealed the Canadiens’ character as well.
“Thought it was one of our most complete games,” said Suzuki. “Just kept going, even when we went down. Got a big goal by Cole to set us up for the six-on-five, and we capitalized there and won it in OT. Thought we were the better team tonight and definitely deserved that one.”
It helped the Canadiens improve to 21-12-6 on their season.
It was Montreal’s final game of 2025, and their 44th win of the year, which is seventh-most in the NHL.
Montembeault earned 23 of those 44 wins. Still, it appeared as though he might be stuck on 22 indefinitely after he last started — back on Dec. 2 — and it wasn’t looking too promising after Reinhart widened the gap in Tuesday’s game.
But Montembeault didn’t let that defeat him. He told himself it was an excellent shot and moved on to facing the next one.
“I was having a really good game, so obviously something like that hurt me earlier in the year — thinking too much after goals or about the way I was playing,” he said. “I was playing a really good game, so just wanted to put that behind me.”
Montembeault did that and took a big step on the path towards progress.
He has several more to take, but if Tuesday’s game proved anything it was that he has the character to keep pushing forward.
