MONTREAL — It began not long after Cole Caufield displayed magical hands to knock a pass out of the air, barely settle it on his stick and roof a wrist shot past Dustin Wolf to make the score 4-1 Montreal Canadiens with a little more than 16 minutes left in the game.
The sold-out Bell Centre crowd celebrated what appeared to be a sure win Wednesday against the Calgary Flames in the Canadiens’ first home game in 18 days, with the home team having gone 4-1-2 over its season-long seven-game road swing that straddled the Christmas break.
Oh my Cole Caufield 🎯 pic.twitter.com/Wk8frpNIUe
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) January 8, 2026
As play continued on the ice, the celebration continued in the stands and slowly morphed into the fans doing the wave by the time the next television timeout came with 13:45 left to play, more than two minutes of game time after Caufield’s goal.
Normally during a TV timeout, there will be overly loud music playing at the Bell Centre and there will be some sort of sponsored content shown on the scoreboard. This time, however, there was none. No music, no sponsored content, nothing but the sound of the wave, the noise from the fans cascading as it wound its way around the building, and the players left to bask in it as the ice was shoveled and the scoreboard that normally showed that sponsored content instead showing video of the wave making its way around the building.
And in fact, it wasn’t just the players basking in it.
“We talked about how we have to improve our home performance overall, and I feel like we did that tonight, and I felt the fans, we haven’t been in this building for a while now, and I feel like our fans gave us the support back based on how we were performing,” coach Martin St. Louis said. “I feel like we earned that time, and I took it all in. It’s special, and I hope for many more. We don’t take it for granted; we know we have to earn that, and I feel like we did that tonight.”
Not taking that for granted was especially true of two players in this game. Phillip Danault was playing his first game at home since being acquired from the Los Angeles Kings just before the holiday trade freeze. His last game in a Canadiens uniform in this building was Game 4 of the 2021 Stanley Cup Final in front of an announced crowd of 3,500 people that was surely significantly higher. But it was nowhere near the full house he played in front of Wednesday.
Danault’s first thought about his return home was centered on that wave and that TV timeout.
“Yeah, the wave was awesome,” he said. “Just electric, and I’m not surprised.
“I missed it. I missed it a lot.”
The last time Danault played in front of these fans, Canadiens rookie goaltender Jacob Fowler was 16 years old. For Danault, that moment was nostalgic, a reaffirmation of why he wanted to be back in Montreal so badly after an incredibly frustrating season in Los Angeles.
For Fowler, it was brand new.
“Bananas,” Fowler said. “This place was going crazy. It’s like every time I play here, it’s just a new level that it reaches each time. Cool moment, I haven’t played in a lot of buildings where they get the wave going and it feels like we just scored.”
Fowler made 28 saves to run his career record to 4-2-2, and he didn’t need to be excellent to earn that moment from the Montreal fans. The Canadiens played a tight game in front of him, didn’t give the Flames a whole lot, and made their rookie goalie’s night relatively easy.
Except that one moment when they didn’t.
With the score tied at 0 early in the second period after the Canadiens dominated the opening 20 minutes but were stymied by Wolf and his goal posts at every turn, Danault was carrying the puck through the neutral zone when he chipped a puck at the Flames blue line for Zack Bolduc to go collect. Except Bolduc had only one hand on his stick as he tried to collect it, and instead it was the Flames who got that puck and headed back toward the Canadiens zone.
The result was Blake Coleman getting a chance from a few feet in front of Fowler, a chance that would have given the Flames a 1-0 lead and demoralized a Canadiens team that would have justifiably felt like it deserved to be leading that game. Instead, Coleman’s shot bounced off Lane Hutson and rolled harmlessly into Fowler’s pads before he covered it up for a faceoff.
A little over a minute later, Alexandre Texier gave the Canadiens a 1-0 lead on his way to a career-high 3-point night.
Fowler (right) continues to impress for the Canadiens. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
That chance for Coleman in front could have been a backbreaker. Instead, it allowed the Canadiens to rightfully take control of a game they were dominating.
Fowler, however, when asked about that save, immediately pointed to what he could have done better.
“Those plays, we do a lot of work at practice, even morning skates, we’re getting reps like that,” he said. “I just think I can be even more calm on that, the less movement I have, the better I can be. I tend to get sloppy if I’m running around, so just try to really just move as less as possible.”
It says a lot about how Fowler is wired. He didn’t like the one goal he allowed, a Joel Farabee shot from 45 feet out that got under his glove. And he didn’t like the goal that was called back on an offside review, a Nazem Kadri shot that got under his glove on a two-on-one break that would have made it a 4-2 game with 4:32 left to play.
To Fowler, it was as if he allowed two goals in this game. And he wasn’t thrilled about either one.
“It’s more that you just, not laugh it off, but look at it like, ‘Jeez, that was a brutal goal. Don’t give up another one like that,’” Fowler said of the Farabee goal. “I was fortunate the video guys and our coaching staff was able to get that offside call, because again, that’s another shot that beat me clean low glove. You don’t see it on the board at the end of the game, but any time you get beat twice like that, you’re going to work on it.
“I haven’t played too many games; I’m pretty young, so learn from it. You want to be better every night.”
“I’m pretty young” is a bit of an understatement. Fowler, 21, is the youngest goalie in the NHL by a wide margin — two years younger than Minnesota Wild phenom and impending Olympian Jesper Wallstedt.
Fowler has a .912 save percentage and continues to make it difficult for the Canadiens to send him back to the AHL because he has objectively been their best goalie since being called up the night of Dec. 9, in the immediate aftermath of a 6-1 loss on home ice to the Tampa Bay Lightning, a night the Bell Centre fans were not doing the wave.
When general manager Kent Hughes was asked Tuesday about Fowler and whether they would want to protect him from how difficult this market can be on a young goaltender, he not only acknowledged it is a concern, but also noted how mentally strong Fowler is despite his age.
A day later, the market showed that young goaltender the other side of that coin, how much fun it can be to succeed here, and Fowler’s soaking that TV timeout in and gaining an appreciation for that side of that coin is incredibly valuable for a young player who is a big part of this team’s future.
However, Fowler was not aware of Hughes’ comments a day earlier, and when they were related to him after the game, his response basically validated those comments from his general manager.
“I’m glad to hear that what I think is what other people think, because I like to have fun and joke around with guys off the ice and be pretty unserious at times, but I feel like when the game’s on, I have a good balance and understanding that hockey’s a big part of my life, but it isn’t everything,” Fowler said. “And with that comes, you know, one goal doesn’t define who I am, but I want to make every save that I can. I was born playing this game, wanted to play at the highest level and be a big part of that. So whatever I can do to stay mentally strong and understand it’s going to take a lot more mentally to break me than other guys, I just think you can take skill out of it, that’s more important.”
It is indeed more important. And the more Fowler plays, the more he defies the odds and the intuitive notion that a goaltender his age does not belong in the NHL, the more it becomes difficult to find a reason to send him back down to the AHL.
He is built differently. He is wired differently. And perhaps conventional wisdom does not apply to Jacob Fowler.