{"id":653235,"date":"2026-05-07T07:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/653235\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T07:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:13:08","slug":"doan-mcleod-spark-sabres-to-win-against-canadiens-in-game-1-of-eastern-2nd-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/653235\/","title":{"rendered":"Doan, McLeod spark Sabres to win against Canadiens in Game 1 of Eastern 2nd Round"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Suzuki<\/a> and Kirby Dach<\/a> scored, and Jakub Dobes<\/a> made 12 saves for the Canadiens, who are the No. 3 seed in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuffalo has a really good rush game. You really have to manage the puck through the neutral zone, which I thought for the most part we did,\u201d Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. \u201cBut I feel like you have to manage the puck in the O-zone too. A lot of 50-50 battles, you\u2019ve got to be on the right side of it \u2026 so we have to do better there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt our top guys got more touches in space and stuff. And that’s what I liked. And I liked that we battled. It wasn’t the start that we wanted in the game, in the series. But we’re going to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 2 of the best-of-7 series will be here on Friday (7 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC).<\/p>\n

Doan gave Buffalo a 1-0 lead at 4:31 of the first period. After Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson<\/a> fell down trying to make a play on the puck in the neutral zone, Benson went in on a 2-on-1 with Doan. Benson\u2019s leg kick in the left face-off circle fooled Dobes into thinking he was going to shoot, and he instead sent a pass behind the skates of sliding Montreal defenseman Noah Dobson<\/a> over to Doan, who was driving to the back door for the tap-in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we wanted an emphasis on getting to their \u2018D\u2019 early and trying to force turnovers,\u201d Doan said. \u201cObviously, \u2018Benny\u2019 does an unbelievable job of that throughout every game, but great start by him there, and I think that got the building on its feet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Suzuki and Kirby Dach scored, and Jakub Dobes made 12 saves for the Canadiens, who are the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-653235","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\/653235","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=653235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}