{"id":552748,"date":"2026-03-22T06:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T06:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/552748\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T06:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T06:57:08","slug":"caufield-gets-hat-trick-2-assists-canadiens-score-7-to-pull-away-from-islanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/552748\/","title":{"rendered":"Caufield gets hat trick, 2 assists, Canadiens score 7 to pull away from Islanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaiden Guhle<\/a> had a goal and two assists, and Jacob Fowler<\/a>\u00a0made 19 saves for the Canadiens (38-21-10), who had lost three of four (1-3-0), including 3-1 at the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Montreal remained four points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for second place in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur group is finding its best version, but I feel you can\u2019t have a group finding its best version without the individual finding their best version,\u201d Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. \u201cAnd a lot of guys are starting to find their best version.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Schaefer<\/a> scored for the Islanders (39-26-5), who lost 3-2 at the Ottawa Senators on Thursday after winning four of five (4-1-0). Ilya Sorokin<\/a> allowed six goals on 32 shots before he was replaced at 11:20 of the third period. David Rittich<\/a>\u00a0saved three of the four shots he faced in relief.<\/p>\n

New York remained one point behind the Detroit Red Wings for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it slipped away in the second period, when we hit those two posts,\u201d Islanders coach Patrick Roy said. \u201cI thought that was the difference in the game, and we could have made it 3-1, and they scored that late goal in that second period on their power play. We tied the game. Unfortunately, it was a bad bounce on that fourth one, and from there they just took over the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caufield gave Montreal a 3-2 lead at 19:08 of the second period with the first of his two power-play goals, the second of the Canadiens\u2019 three in the game. Montreal\u2019s first 40-goal scorer since\u00a0Vincent Damphousse<\/a>\u00a0in 1993-94 got his 41st of the season, the most by a Canadiens player in a season since Stephane Richer<\/a>\u00a0scored 51 goals in 1989-90.<\/p>\n

Schaefer\u2019s power-play goal tied it 3-3 when he scored 45 seconds into the third period on a one-timer from the point. It was the 18-year-old\u2019s 22nd goal of the season, moving him within one of tying Brian Leetch<\/a>\u2019s record for the most goals in a season by a rookie defenseman (23 goals in 1988-89).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kaiden Guhle had a goal and two assists, and Jacob Fowler\u00a0made 19 saves for the Canadiens (38-21-10), who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-552748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}