Dobes Canadiens .947 Run Fuels Conn Smythe Case
Jakub Dobes has turned the dobes canadiens into a real Conn Smythe Trophy conversation. The Montreal Canadiens rookie goaltender is 6-4 with a.918 save percentage in 10 Stanley Cup Playoffs games, and his work in Games 2 and 3 against Buffalo gave the case more weight.
Dobes and Buffalo
He stopped 54 of 57 shots in those two games, finishing with a.947 save percentage and a 1.50 goals-against average in the Eastern Conference Second Round. That stretch did not happen in a vacuum; it came after Montreal leaned on him again when the series tightened, and he kept producing the kind of numbers that put a goalie on award ballots.
Dobes also went 4-0 with a.948 save percentage and a 1.49 goals-against average after a loss this postseason. For a team that has needed answers in the crease, that is the cleanest marker of how his run has changed the shape of this playoff push.
Game 7 Against Tampa Bay
The first round made the size of the performance harder to ignore. Dobes stopped 28 of 29 shots in Game 7 against Tampa Bay, and Montreal won 2-1 despite being outshot 29-9. Those 29 shots on goal were the lowest total in NHL history for a team that won a single playoff game.
That win also put him in a small slice of Canadiens history. He became the fifth rookie goaltender in the franchise to win a Game 7, and only the second Canadiens rookie goalie over the past 40 years to win at least six games in a single postseason. Patrick Roy won 15 games as a rookie in 1986, a reminder of how high the bar has been for Montreal’s young netminders.
Roy, Dryden, and Dobes
The award comparison is where Dobes’ case gets real. Since the Conn Smythe Trophy began in 1965, Roy and Ken Dryden both won it as rookies with the Canadiens. Cam Ward did the same with Carolina in 2006, and Ron Hextall won it with Philadelphia in 1987 as a rookie goalie.
Since Roy won his second Conn Smythe Trophy in 1993, seven other NHL goalies have taken playoff MVP. Andrei Vasilevskiy was the most recent in 2021, while Jake Oettinger set the standard cited here with a.953 third-period save percentage in the 2024 postseason.
Dobes has been just as sharp late. He owns a.951 save percentage in the third period this postseason, with 77 saves on 81 shots and 58 straight third-period saves dating back to Game 4 against Tampa Bay. He also has a.920 save percentage in 5-on-5 close situations, a detail that matches the way Montreal’s first-round series kept living on one goal or less for nearly every shift.
The Canadiens-Lightning series was the third series in NHL playoff history to have seven straight one-goal games, and the score was either tied or within one goal for 98.7 percent of it. That is the stage Dobes has occupied, and his numbers now sit among the rare rookie playoff runs that can support a serious Conn Smythe case.
