Habs Game 6 collapse was an 8-3 home loss after leading. Buffalo scored seven unanswered, forced a Game 7 in Buffalo, and the series is tied at three.
The Buffalo Sabres beat the Montreal Canadiens 8-3 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Second Round on Saturday night at the Bell Centre. The series is tied 3-3 and goes back to Buffalo for Game 7 on Monday. The Canadiens led 3-2 after the first period and then gave up seven unanswered goals. Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin had five points. Jack Quinn scored twice. Tage Thompson had a goal and three assists. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen relieved Alex Lyon after the first period and stopped all seventeen shots he faced.
This was the exact game Montreal did not want to play, on the exact night it most wanted to avoid playing it: an elimination game for Buffalo, a capacity Bell Centre crowd, a chance to reach the Eastern Conference Final at home, and a 3-2 first-period lead that evaporated into the worst loss of Montreal’s postseason. The Habs had the building, the lead, and the matchup. They gave all three back in twelve minutes of the second period.
The first period was everything Montreal wanted
Dahlin scored thirty-two seconds in, the eighth time Buffalo had opened the scoring in these playoffs, the most of any team. Ivan Demidov answered sixty-eight seconds later, continuing the goal-scoring streak that began in Game 5, the fastest answering goal of the series. The opening ten minutes were the chaos this series produces in Montreal’s building, and the Habs were winning it.
Then the special teams went Montreal’s way. Peyton Krebs roughed Alex Newhook, and Demidov scored his second of the night on the power play — a lefty-to-lefty seam pass from Lane Hutson that Demidov one-timed past Lyon. Minutes later, with Jakub Dobeš and Dahlin trading coincidental minors and the teams skating four-on-four, Jake Evans scored a shorthanded goal while Buffalo was technically on a power play. The Habs led 3-1.
Jason Zucker pulled one back on a Buffalo power play before the period ended, making it 3-2. But Montreal walked off the ice after twenty minutes with a lead, a two-goal performance from the rookie who could not score for the first four games of the series, and a Bell Centre measuring its decibel readings in the 114 range. Alex Lyon had given up three goals on a handful of shots and looked shaky. Lindy Ruff pulled him for the second period. Everything was set up for Montreal to close the series at home.
Seven unanswered goals
Zach Benson scored fifty-nine seconds into the second period to tie it 3-3. From there it was a collapse. Jack Quinn scored his first career playoff goal on a power play created by an Alexandre Carrier interference penalty. Konsta Helenius scored two minutes after that, his second goal in as many games, to make it 5-3 Buffalo. Three goals in under twelve minutes of the second period, and the Bell Centre, which had been the loudest building in North America, went silent in the way only a home crowd watching a collapse can.
The third period was worse. Quinn scored again on another power play, off another Carrier interference penalty, to make it 6-3, and Martin St. Louis pulled Dobeš and put in Jacob Fowler for his first NHL playoff action. Thompson and Benson added the seventh and eighth goals. Buffalo scored seven unanswered after trailing 3-2, and the final 8-3 was the worst loss of Montreal’s entire playoff run. It was the first eight-goal playoff game for Buffalo in twenty years, since a 2006 series against Ottawa.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen relieved Lyon after the first period and stopped all seventeen shots he faced. The goaltender Montreal was supposed to feast on has now won the closeout in Game 4 with a twenty-eight-save night, lost in Game 5, and come off the bench in Game 6 to shut the door completely. He will almost certainly start Game 7. The goaltending matchup that Montreal looked to have controlled in the Tampa series has become a real question.
Buffalo’s stars finally showed up
For five games, the story of this series was Buffalo’s best players taking penalties that turned into Montreal goals and producing nothing at five-on-five. In Game 6, that inverted. Rasmus Dahlin had five points. Tage Thompson, moved to the wing by Lindy Ruff to reduce his defensive responsibility, had a goal and three assists and played his best game of the round. Jack Quinn, who had taken twenty shots without scoring across the playoffs, scored twice.
The Thompson adjustment is the one Montreal has to account for in Game 7. Putting the forty-goal scorer on the wing freed him from centre-ice defensive duties and let him play a pure shoot-first game. He took three faceoffs all night. He fired everything at the net the moment he touched the puck. Lindy Ruff also moved Benson onto Thompson’s line, pairing the team’s leading playoff goal-scorer with its leading regular-season one. The result was the Buffalo offence Montreal had suppressed for five games arriving all at once.
Buffalo’s power play, which went 0-for-22 to end the regular season and entered this series as the analytical soft spot, went four-for-six in Game 6. The unit that was supposed to be a liability has now scored in five of the six games and was the single biggest factor in the blowout. Whatever Lindy Ruff said to his team between Games 5 and 6 — he had been preaching discipline and puck management all series — it produced the most complete game Buffalo has played in the round.
Both teams are bad at closing
Game 6 was the mirror image of Game 5. In Game 5, Buffalo led, surrendered the lead, and lost on penalties its own stars took. In Game 6, Montreal led, surrendered the lead, and lost on a goaltending collapse and a Buffalo power play that would not miss. The two teams have combined to make a home-ice record in this series of almost nothing — Montreal is winning roughly half its home games, Buffalo less than that — and the series has belonged, game after game, to whichever team is on the road.
That is the strange shape of this matchup. Buffalo is 4-1 on the road this postseason. Montreal won a Game 7 in Tampa on the road on nine shots and won Game 5 in Buffalo by three. Both teams play looser, freer, and better when the building is against them, and both teams tighten up and bleed leads when the building is theirs to lose. Game 7 is in Buffalo. By the logic of the series, that should favour Montreal. By the logic of momentum, it should favour the team that just scored eight goals.
Neither logic decides Game 7s. What decides them is which team handles the next bad bounce, the next penalty, the next save, the next twelve-minute stretch where everything goes wrong. Both teams have shown they can produce that stretch and both have shown they can survive it. The series is tied 3-3 because it deserves to be.
Dobeš does not lose twice in a row
The single most important fact going into Game 7 is the one that has held all postseason. Jakub Dobeš is 5-0 after a loss in these playoffs. His regular-season record after a loss was 8-1-1. He has not lost two consecutive games once this entire season, regular season or playoffs. He got pulled in Game 6 after giving up six goals, the worst night of his rookie playoff run, and that is exactly the kind of loss he has answered every single time.
The Habs have not lost back-to-back games all postseason either. They lost Game 1 in Buffalo and won Game 2. They lost Game 4 on a stanchion bounce and won Game 5 by three. The alternating pattern that has defined Montreal’s spring is not a strategy, but it points at something real: this team responds. It responded to a Game 7 against Vasilevskiy. It responded to every setback Buffalo has handed it. Now it has to respond to the worst loss of its season, on the road, with a Conference Final berth on the line.
Game 7 is Monday night at 7:30 p.m. ET at KeyBank Center in Buffalo. The winner goes to Carolina in the Eastern Conference Final. Montreal has played a Game 7 on the road already this postseason and won it on nine shots. Buffalo has not won a playoff series since 2007 and is one win from ending the longest active series drought in the league. Everything this series has built across six one-sided games comes down to sixty minutes, or more, on Monday.
Go Habs go. Buffalo on Monday.
Sources
- NHL.com — Quinn, Dahlin lead Sabres past Canadiens in Game 6 to force Game 7, May 16, 2026
- ESPN — Sabres 8-3 Canadiens Game Recap, May 16, 2026
- CBS Sports — Buffalo Sabres vs. Montreal Canadiens Box Score & Stats, May 16, 2026
- CBC News — Sabres rout Canadiens 8-3 in Game 6 to force a deciding Game 7, May 16, 2026
- TSN — Sabres score seven unanswered to rout Canadiens and force Game 7, May 16, 2026