Zachary Bolduc went five-hole on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to win it in the shootout, and it was outrageous. Second straight game he's been the guy who ends it, after he scored the only goal in a six-round shootout against Detroit on Saturday. Keep the clip. Put it on a loop. He's earned that.
The Canadiens got there the hard way, against a team that had no business making it hard.
Montreal outshot Buffalo 38-17 in regulation and overtime. Seventeen. One team controlled the puck for long stretches while the other barely got it over the blue line. Montreal led 3-1 heading into the third. Then Buffalo scored twice in 61 seconds, Josh Norris and then Olen Zellweger, and a game that should have been in a drawer was suddenly tied and heading to a skills competition.
Buffalo did this without Rasmus Dahlin, who didn't travel after hurting his back. Their best defenseman stayed home, and the Canadiens still couldn't put them away in sixty-five minutes. Zellweger, a 23-year-old playing his first games since Buffalo acquired him, scored twice while filling in on the top pairing. That's a knock on Montreal's close-out instincts.
The skill is real and the result counts the same in the standings as a 6-0 laugher. Two points is two points, and a team that keeps winning the tiebreaker is doing something right about nerve, if nothing else. Bolduc has ice in him, and the bench clearly knows it.
But wins that keep arriving via highlight-reel moments are wins that keep needing one. Luukkonen made 35 saves and kept Buffalo breathing all night, which means Montreal had every chance to settle this in regulation and didn't take it. Lean on the shootout magic often enough and eventually you run into a goalie who reads the move, or a night where the five-hole stays shut.
The goal was a gift to anyone who watched it, but the third period was a warning to anyone paying attention. Bolduc is covering for a problem that still needs fixing, and a team this good at carrying play shouldn't need bailing out against a Buffalo side down its captain.
