Canadiens win a playoff game like none other in NHL history, and it's Game 7 to advance and meet Sabres
Canadiens win a playoff game like none other in NHL history, and it's Game 7 to advance and meet Sabres originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
The Montreal Canadiens played 60 minutes of the grittiest hockey imaginable.
Along the way, they scored two goals, and the Tampa Bay Lightning scored one, and so that means the Habs are moving on.
It was Game 7 on Sunday night, and Montreal was 2-1 winners. They'll play the Buffalo Sabres in the Eastern Conference semifinal starting on Wednesday.
And they needed every little bit of that grit.
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On this night, the Canadiens fired just nine shots on goal.
It's the fewest shots on goal in a playoff win in NHL history, according to Sportsnet.
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That's more than 100 years of NHL history that this had never been done.
Shoot, the Canadiens have won more Stanley Cups than anyone. They're right in the thick of lots of huge playoff moments. They had never done anything like this.
Even the goals were gritty. Nick Suzuki deflected a shot with a redirection into the net. And Alex Newhook banked one off the back of Andrei Vasilevsky from behind the goal.
These weren't pretty plays. But on this night, they were winning plays.
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A series of the young Canadiens against the upstart Sabres has the potential to be special.
And if not for an unprecedented victory, Montreal wouldn't be moving on at all.
Tampa Bay had 20 more shots on goal. The Lightning fired puck after puck toward the net.
The Canadiens got two across the line, though, and that was one more than the Bolts had, and that's the only number that matters.
