BUFFALO, N.Y. — The buzzword after the Montreal Canadiens dominated Friday's Game 2 and tied their second-round series with the Buffalo Sabres 1-1 was “maturity.”
Justifiably so. Because it takes maturity to rattle off a ninth straight win after a loss. It takes maturity to come out of the gate loose, free and flying when you have every reason to be tense. And it takes a lot of maturity to avoid turning one bad, momentum-surrendering sequence into an avalanche of problems, and the Canadiens exhibited that after allowing Zach Benson to score with 38 seconds left in the second period.
That goal got the Sabres on the board and left them trailing 3-1 going to the third.
But the Canadiens regained momentum almost immediately in the final frame — in the lead-up to Alex Carrier’s goal 3:54 in — and flashed a lot of maturity before Nick Suzuki scored into an empty net to seal the 5-1 win that wrestled away home ice advantage with the series shifting to the Bell Centre.
Not bad for the youngest team in these playoffs.
But also, not surprising.
“We’ve been together for four years,” head coach Martin St. Louis said both before and after the game.
Over that time, the Canadiens have experienced nearly everything there is to experience to handle moments like these maturely. And there were plenty of signs in the lead-up to Friday’s win that they were going to do exactly that.
The Canadiens appeared unfettered by Wednesday’s Game 1 loss. Every player we spoke with on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning not only expressed belief in their ability to rebound in Game 2 but also presented that belief with such conviction.
After the Canadiens came through Friday, Mike Matheson described the pre-game vibe around the group as “focused and confident.”
It was a considerable departure from what the Canadiens were after losing Game 1 of their first-round series to the Washington Capitals last year.
But that experience was one of many that shaped the maturity of this year’s team.
“It’s built over time,” said Suzuki. “There’s not one specific moment where it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re really good.’ We lost a lot, then we had to learn what it takes to win, and that journey leads to where we are right now and the confidence that we have in our game plan and in each other.”
The captain said it starts with the coach, who always seems to find the right thing to say at the right time.
“Marty had an unbelievable speech before the game today,” Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobes told Sportsnet's Kyle Bukauskas in his post-game interview with Hockey Night in Canada. “I will probably remember it maybe for the rest of my career.”
“He just said it’s gonna be a war out there and we’ve gotta play like it,” Jake Evans told us. “I don’t know if it was meant to be more physical, but we were all just (mentally) dialled in from the start.”
Before that, Alex Newhook belted out a lineup read at full volume in the room.
Then he screamed his way up the ice on his first shift and tipped Montreal’s first shot of the game past Alex Lyon for a 1-0 lead at 1:36 of the first period.
Less than three minutes later, Phillip Danault cleanly ripped back consecutive offensive-zone face-offs, and on the second one, Matheson wired the puck past Lyon to put the Canadiens up 2-0.
Newhook’s second of the game, which made it 3-0, came after a sharp penalty kill — one of five the Canadiens came up with to lock down their lead.
You look at the effort and composure in that category — and in every other one — and see a Canadiens team that’s grown by leaps and bounds.
On the ice, they were the young, fast, run-and-gun, come-from-behind, heart-attack kids through two-thirds of the regular season before clamping down defensively in the lead-up to the playoffs. Off it, they learned to avoid riding the emotional waves that come with every win and loss and put those lessons to use in their seven-game win over the battle-tested Tampa Bay Lightning in Round 1.
“I think we’re a group that stays in control, and that’s maturity,” said St. Louis. “Sometimes you get challenged. You get challenged emotionally, and the maturity part is important. We have different opportunities to grow from these challenges, and we’ve done that. So, I think it’s part of our growth, our process; maturity is a big part of it.”
Saves help, and Dobes has made a ton of them since the trade deadline.
The 24-year-old rookie was sensational down the stretch. He took his game to another level against the Lightning. And he stopped 25 of 26 shots from the Sabres in Game 2 after surrendering four goals on the first 10 shots he faced in the series.
In front of him, 22-year-old Lane Hutson, who blamed himself for the Canadiens’ rocky start in Game 1 — he tripped over himself and gave the Sabres a three-on-one they capitalized on to score the first goal in a 4-2 win — rebounded with an assist on the opening goal of this game and played a very mature 20:54.
Newhook, who’s Montreal’s only Cup winner, came up with two of the goals, while veterans Danault, Matheson, Carrier and Suzuki made big plays on the others.
The celebration afterwards was subdued.
“I don’t think we have a feeling of having all the answers against them,” said Matheson. “We obviously were able to have a good stretch of scoring against them tonight, but we’ve got a lot of respect for the way they play. They’ve had a lot of success for a long, long stretch of this year. So, we know going into Game 3 we’ve got things that we need to work on, and we’ll focus on that tomorrow and going into Game 3.”
Because that’s what a mature team does, and the Canadiens have shown they finally fit that description.
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