The Montreal Canadiens host the Buffalo Sabres in a pivotal Game 3 Sunday night, and head coach Martin St. Louis said his team will be ready for what he expects will be a raucous atmosphere at Bell Centre.
“You gotta take the moment. You know it’s coming, and you gotta take it. I feel the preparation is done before that. I feel that’s a couple of minutes where you can really take it all in. Those are moments you’ll remember forever,” he said via TSN’s Claire Hanna.
“That feeling is unbelievable. It’s hard to describe. I think you have to be in the building. For me, it’s hard to describe on the bench what that feels like. You have to be on the bench, but you gotta take those moments in.”
The Sabres opened the series with a 2-0 victory on Wednesday, but Montreal bounced back to even the series Friday night in Game 2, getting two goals from Alex Newhook in a 5-1 victory that gave the Habs home-ice advantage for the rest of the series. Alexandre Carrier, Nick Suzuki and Mike Matheson also scored, while Jakub Dobes stopped 28 of 29 shots in the win.
The Habs have been stingy so far this postseason, allowing just three goals through the first two games of the second-round series. In Montreal’s seven-game victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round, they did not allow more than three goals in a single game and held Tampa to just 15 total markers during the series.
Much of that success has been due to Dobes, who has a 2.14 goals-against average and .917 save percentage so far this postseason. But St. Louis said it’s also a product of the team buying into a defensive style of play during the latter stages of their rebuild.
“Defensive hockey is a big part of a winning recipe. You need to score goals, but I feel like we’ve progressed and progressed through the last two seasons and obviously, I don’t feel like our offensive game hurts because we’re getting better defensively. We’re learning to manage games better, and when it’s time to defend, we can defend,” St. Louis said.
“We talk about defending so far from our end one. To me, when you lose the puck anywhere you’re defending. I feel like we’ve gotten better at that. So hopefully you have to defend less in your zone. I feel like when you have to defend.”
St. Louis said he’s especially glad to see the progress from a team with so many players early in their careers.
“Usually young teams are not known to really like defending. Talk about maturity, and some maturity has no age. I feel like we’ve matured a lot in that department. We haven’t used “oh we’re young” we shouldn’t value that as much. I feel like it’s a big part of our maturity and our process and why we’re able to compete against anyone,” he said.
According to Hanna, Matheson, Josh Anderson and Kaiden Guhle were not on the ice during Sunday’s gameday skate that was otherwise well attended. All three players played in line with their regular ice time during Game 2.
Game 4 in the series will go on Tuesday evening in Montreal.
