{"id":597029,"date":"2026-04-10T03:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/597029\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T03:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:03:08","slug":"cole-caufield-scores-50th-goal-as-montreal-canadiens-win-thriller-over-tampa-bay-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/597029\/","title":{"rendered":"Cole Caufield scores 50th goal as Montreal Canadiens win thriller over Tampa Bay Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 Cole Caufield<\/a> became the first Canadien to score 50 goals in 36 years and Juraj Slafkovsky buried a late winning goal as Montreal defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> 2-1 in a heated, fight-filled affair Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Slafkovsky scored his 30th goal while Nick Suzuki<\/a>, with two helpers, reached 70 assists on the season for Montreal (47-22-10).<\/p>\n

Jakub Dobes<\/a> made 17 saves for his seventh consecutive win.<\/p>\n

Darren Raddysh<\/a> replied for Tampa Bay (48-25-6), which lost its third straight game. Andrei Vasilevskiy<\/a> stopped 19 shots.<\/p>\n

Caufield beat Vasilevskiy with a wrist shot at 6:29 of the second period to reach the half-century milestone Thursday, sending a frenzied Bell Centre crowd \u2014 including Prime Minister Mark Carney \u2014 to its feet.<\/p>\n

That held as the only goal until Raddysh hammered home an equalizer with 1:51 remaining in the third period with the goalie pulled.<\/p>\n

But Slafkovsky quickly replied with 64 seconds remaining, finishing off a pass from Suzuki to cap a thrilling night.<\/p>\n

Carney was in attendance with Liberal party members gathering for a convention Thursday through Saturday in Montreal.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens, Lightning and Sabres are locked in a three-way race for first place in the Atlantic Division with three regular-season games remaining for Montreal and Tampa Bay, and two left for Buffalo. Two of the three will likely face off in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n

Montreal moved two points ahead of Tampa Bay and two behind Buffalo for the division lead.<\/p>\n

The game featured several scrums after the whistle, a spirited fight between Montreal\u2019s Josh Anderson<\/a> and Tampa Bay\u2019s Declan Carlile<\/a>, and seven 10-minute misconducts \u2014 culminating in 126 penalty minutes. The second period alone had more than 100, with players packing in to both penalty boxes.<\/p>\n

Takeaways<\/p>\n

Canadiens: Caufield became the seventh Canadiens to hit the 50 mark, and the first since St\u00e9phane Richer in 1989-90. He also scored his 29th go-ahead goal, passing Pavel Bure<\/a> for the second highest single-season total in NHL history behind Brett Hull<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lightning: Went without a shot on goal until 8:35 left in the first period as the Canadiens held them to the perimeter all night. Neither team scored in 11 combined power-play opportunities.<\/p>\n

Key moment<\/p>\n

Caufield finally broke through with his 50th when he received a pass from Suzuki off the rush and fired a shot past a sliding Vasilevskiy blocker side as the building erupted. Caufield\u2019s father, Paul Caufield, watched on in attendance and wiped tears from his eyes.<\/p>\n

Key stat<\/p>\n

Caufield is the NHL\u2019s third player listed as five-foot-eight or shorter to score 50 goals in a season, following Dennis Maruk<\/a> and Theo Fleury.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

Canadiens: Host the Columbus Blue Jackets<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Lightning: Visit the Boston Bruins<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Cole Caufield became the first Canadien to score 50 goals in 36 years and Juraj Slafkovsky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-597029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}