2-1 victory<\/a> in Game 7 on Sunday night.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s the first time Montreal has advanced since losing the Stanley Cup Finals to Tampa Bay in 2021. Game 1 against the Sabres is Wednesday night in Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Before shifting attention to the next series, the Canadiens enjoyed their victory following a hard-fought, evenly-contested series that featured seven games decided by one goal and four that went to overtime.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI feel like you can\u2019t take the player out of me, right?\u201d St. Louis said about his triumphant speech. \u201cI don\u2019t try to be in the locker room a lot. To me, this is their space. It\u2019s their team. It\u2019s not my team. I try and steer them. But every now and then I have my moment with them. I try and pick my spot and a night like tonight, I wanted to be with them and we had some fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite being held to just nine shots \u2014 the Canadiens are the first team to win a playoff game with fewer than 10 shots on goal since shots were first tracked in the 1959-60 season \u2014 Montreal found a way to beat a veteran team that has plenty of experience in big games.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens got a couple lucky bounces on goals by Nick Suzuki and Alex Newhook. But they would be going home if not for Dobes\u2019 heroics. The rookie goaltender stopped 28 shots and outplayed Andrei Vasilevskiy over the seven games.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMany times in the season the guys bailed me out and helped me out and I tried to do the same and vice versa,\u201d Dobes said. \u201cSometimes they don\u2019t play good. Sometimes I don\u2019t play good. They always got my back. I always got theirs. That\u2019s our mentality. We have a really good group, good leaders, good locker room. This wasn\u2019t anything special. I was just trying to keep the guys in it. I was just waiting for them to get going and that\u2019s exactly what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the shaving cream to the face, Dobes said: \u201cCan\u2019t wait for next practice. I\u2019ll have something prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Canadiens moved on because they played like the looser team. While the Lightning seemed tight at times \u2014 they lost three home games \u2014 upstart Montreal is having fun and feeding off their Hockey Hall of Fame coach.<\/p>\n
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The Canadiens are the only team from Canada still playing in the postseason after Ottawa and Edmonton were already knocked out.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long road back here. After losing to the Lightning in the Cup Final, the Canadiens were last in the NHL in 2021-22. They were bottom five in the league the next two seasons before St. Louis led to the playoffs last season only to exit in the first round.<\/p>\n
With Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky and Dobes leading the way, the Canadiens have a shot against Buffalo. The Sabres were the NHL\u2019s best team after Jan. 1 and snapped a 14-year playoff drought with 109 points this season, only three more than Montreal.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAfter the Cup Final, there was a lot of tough times and a lot of guys left,\u201d Suzuki said. \u201cWe started this rebuild and slowly but surely, drafted some really good players and have an amazing coach. It\u2019s probably faster than a lot of people expected but when you get great players together with a great system and great leadership, things can turn quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\nRob Maaddi, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Martin St. Louis pounded his chest in the locker room, Jakub Dobes received a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[26979,84446,13270,49,48,23752,46030,37777,22390,10397,743,448,10099,20739,82,14577,28240,745],"class_list":["post-647245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-alex-newhook","tag-andrei-vasilevskiy","tag-buffalo","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton","tag-fla","tag-jakub-dobes","tag-juraj-slafkovsky","tag-martin-st-louis","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-nhl","tag-nick-suzuki","tag-ottawa","tag-sports","tag-st-louis","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-lightning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647245","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=647245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}