For Canadiens, it’s about ‘finding a way’ in Game 7 versus Sabres

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BUFFALO — Don’t get caught up in trying to be perfect.

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That’s part of the message that Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis will impart on his players in the final preparation for Game 7 against the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night.

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“It’s about finding a way,” St. Louis said at the Canadiens’ downtown hotel just after the noon hour. “You don’t get a do-over, so just leave it out there.”

St. Louis, if he so chose, wouldn’t have had to venture deep into the team’s video archives to stress those points.

The Canadiens’ Game 7 victory on May 3 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs was about as imperfect as a team could be in winning, as Montreal was outshot 29-9 but managed to advance on a third-period goal by Alex Newhook in a 2-1 win.

Considering the manner in which the best-of-seven second round between the Sabres and Canadiens has played out, accurately predicting which team will advance to the Eastern Conference final against the Carolina Hurricanes would be a challenge.

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Of the six games, four have been decided by at least three goals and only one, a 3-2 Sabres win in Game 4, has been decided by just one goal.

Does it matter that the Canadiens don’t, as least not recently, lose two games in a row? Montreal, 5-0-0 in the playoffs in the game after a loss, wasn’t able to sustain much in the way of pressure after taking a 3-1 lead in the first 11 minutes of Game 6 and the Sabres rolled, scoring the game’s last seven goals.

Goaltender Jakub Dobes, pulled in favour of Jacob Fowler after two periods, has to have an awfully short memory. At the same time, his teammates have to forget that they couldn’t put up much of a fight once Buffalo started pulling away.

Belief remains

Confidence in the Canadiens room hasn’t waned after what happened on Saturday night on home ice.

“A lot of us have gone through this together, the rebuild, a couple tough years, and then last year, squeaking into the playoffs,” defenceman Kaiden Guhle said. “In this moment, where we’re at right now, it’s so much more special that we’ve all gone through all of that together. It’s a tight group. You want to do all this for each other.

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“If you told us in September that we would be in the second round in Game 7 in Buffalo, we would be pretty happy.”

Contrary to the Canadiens’ Game 7 win two weeks ago, the Sabres have no such experience to fall back on.

In fact, in team history, the Sabres have won one Game 7, going 1-6 in the win-or-go-home match. The lone victory was in 1997, when Derek Plante scored in overtime against the Ottawa Senators in the Eastern Conference quarterfinal.

That wasn’t on the mind of Sabres coach Lindy Ruff on Monday morning.

The Sabres have won just two of their six home games in the ’26 playoffs and Ruff went a different route on Sunday, having the team stay in a hotel adjacent to the KeyBank Center.

“You’ve got a lot of friends, a lot of family (close by),” Ruff said. “We just tried to get away from that and be with the group, be with each other, wrap our arms around this opportunity.

“If we were in training camp and you wanted to talk about playing a game in the middle of May on an 85-degree day in Buffalo to move on, we would all sign on the dotted line.”

tkoshan@postmedia.com

X: @koshtorontosun

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