{"id":915206,"date":"2026-09-30T10:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/915206\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T10:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:34:11","slug":"defiant-dobes-seals-canadiens-season-opening-win-over-maple-leafs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/915206\/","title":{"rendered":"Defiant Dobes seals Canadiens’ season-opening win over Maple Leafs"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 It was with a fraction of a second remaining in the first win of this Montreal Canadiens<\/a> season that Jakub Dobes<\/a> yanked John Tavares\u2019 stick from his hands and goaded the Toronto Maple Leafs forward into pushing him.<\/p>\n

The puck was out of sight, the game was all but over, but not for the feisty goaltender who made it clear from the start he would battle to the last whistle \u2014 and beyond if he had to.<\/p>\n

That last gesture was a clear message to Tavares. A rather unnecessary one in the eyes of just about anyone other than Dobes.<\/p>\n

The thing is, though, this is what he thrives on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know he\u2019s a competitor,\u201d said winning goal-scorer Alexandre Carrier, though that doesn\u2019t fully sum up what Dobes is.<\/p>\n

He is a defiant competitor, a guy blocking every puck like he\u2019s batting away every barb of criticism that\u2019s ever stung him.<\/p>\n

If you were keeping count Tuesday, Dobes blocked 26 pucks \u2014 including three from Auston Matthews, three of five from William Nylander, four from Kirill Marchenko, and yes, four from Tavares \u2014 in this season-opening 3-2 win at Scotiabank Arena.<\/p>\n

Then he came out after the game and said, \u201cI feel pretty good, I saw that a lot of people have a lot of opinions about me\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In the lead up to Tuesday\u2019s game there\u2019s was understandably some buzz around the hockey world about whether Dobes could follow up the outstanding finish to his rookie season with a stable start to his sophomore year.<\/p>\n

Coupled with all the positive noise around Samuel Montembeault\u2019s resurgence<\/a> through pre-season and some totally misplaced scrutiny of his last practice before the Canadiens took off for Toronto, the 25-year-old was obviously irked before the puck even dropped.<\/p>\n

After it did, and after Dobes allowed the first of the two Nylander shots that got by him, he played like his middle finger was holding his glove up for the rest of the night.<\/p>\n

Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis called Dobes \u201cexcellent,\u201d though \u201creassuring\u201d would\u2019ve worked just as well.<\/p>\n

No goaltender was better from trade deadline through three rounds of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs. He topped all of them in goals saved above expected, winning 10 of his last 14 regular-season games before winning nine more in the post-season and setting the bar almost impossibly high to clear.<\/p>\n

But, as Carrier said after Tuesday\u2019s game, \u201cYou could feel he was in control, focused, and he took off on the same foot he left off on last season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens forced Dobes to do that, and he responded as they\u2019d hoped he would.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made some really big saves for us, especially early on,\u201d said St. Louis. \u201cI felt like we weren\u2019t playing fast enough, and he bought us some time to get going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in front of friends and family from his nearby hometown of Burlington, Ont., Josh Anderson did what he always does against the Leafs. His 17th regular-season goal in the 42nd game of his career versus Toronto tied things up 1-1.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens tilted the ice over the next 15 minutes spread over the second half of the first period and first third of the second period and Zachary Bolduc capped that sequence by finishing a nice play from Mike Matheson to put them up 2-1.<\/p>\n

Carrier\u2019s goal at 13:12 of the third period would\u2019ve put this game out of reach if not for a phenomenal play by Nylander to pull the Leafs back within a goal with 4:14 to play.<\/p>\n

But Dobes had the last laugh \u2014 though not the last push \u2014 when he charged out of his crease to make a great stop on Matthews to seal the win.<\/p>\n

All of Dobes\u2019 best ones looked like that.<\/p>\n

When asked how he\u2019s found this perfect balance between patience and aggression, he quipped, \u201cI was playing with it during the pre-season, but had a really good practice\u2026 Monday? Yeah, Monday\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

You could say Dobes needn\u2019t get wrapped up in whatever\u2019s being said about him off the ice or whatever\u2019s happening in front of him on it, but to suggest it\u2019s distracting him would be inaccurate. We have enough of a sample \u2014 especially after watching some of his antics in the playoffs \u2014 to know it\u2019s quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you could see it at the end (with Tavares), said Carrier. \u201cI think it\u2019s part of his mindset, his attitude; he wants to be that guy. And I personally love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens should because it seems to bring out the best in Dobes.<\/p>\n

It certainly did on this night, when the Canadiens were far from their best and needed him at his feistiest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 It was with a fraction of a second remaining in the first win of this Montreal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-915206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915206","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=915206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}