Cole Caufield broke a five-game scoring drought with a tiebreaking power-play goal as the Montreal Canadiens throttled the visiting Buffalo Sabres 6-2 in Game 3, taking a 2-1 best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series lead on Sunday night.
A 51-goal scorer in the regular season, Caufield, who also posted an assist, had not found the net since Game 5 of the first round against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Alex Newhook tallied twice and Juraj Slafkovsky notched his fourth postseason power-play goal. Zachary Bolduc and Kirby Dach also scored, Lane Hutson had two helpers and Jakub Dobes made 26 saves.
“He does his job every night and every day,” Caufield said about Dobes in a Sportsnet interview. “I couldn’t be more proud of a guy like that. … Again, a special player.”
The Sabres’ Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin produced a goal and an assist apiece. Alex Lyon stopped 31 shots.
Referring to his Game 2 performance as an “absolute disaster,” Thompson quieted the crowd in the NHL’s largest arena when Dobes moved far out to meet Dahlin’s blast, which went wide and clanged off the end boards.
Thompson corralled the puck on the hard rebound and potted an easy marker through the vacated crease just 53 seconds in.
Newhook, who registered the Game 7 series-winner in Tampa, cashed in by bouncing one off Buffalo defenseman Conor Timmins at 15:31 to square the contest.
Caufield missed a tap-in during an early second-period power play, but he found redemption after Hutson drove through the left circle on a power play and put the puck on Caufield’s stick for a 2-1 lead at 6:05.
“We have to be smarter,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “We took five (offensive) zone penalties. Our discipline for that wasn’t good enough. You let them operate 5-on-4 and we end up with a broken stick. You give them that much time and they’re going to get opportunities.”
The home side’s fourth line made it 3-1 when Joe Veleno fed a pass back to a trailing Bolduc, who beat Lyon at 10:43.
After Buffalo’s Beck Malenstyn went off for a hard interference collision with Dobes, Hutson slipped a pass through the slot that clipped Slafkovsky for a second power-play goal at 12:17 to make it 4-1.
Dahlin answered with his own man-advantage marker 16 seconds after Dach was penalized for holding Josh Doan’s stick at 14:30.
The Sabres put together a furious push on a power play and followed it up in the third, but a Montreal 2-on-1 rush ended with Dach finding the puck and firing in his fourth goal of the playoffs for a 5-2 lead at 8:46.
“Our puck play still isn’t to a level where I’d like it,” Ruff said. “… Montreal’s a good team. They made us pay for our mistakes.”
Newhook put the match away with his fifth postseason marker when he was awarded one after being fouled on a breakaway toward an empty net at 15:14.
–Field Level Media
