Canadiens lose 8-3 to Buffalo in Game 6, force Ch Mtl Game 7
ch mtl ended Saturday night with a stalled celebration. Montreal lost 8-3 to Buffalo in Game 6 at the Bell Centre, turning what had looked like a clinching night into another trip back to a decisive Game 7.
Bell Centre Turns Quiet
The Canadiens had a chance to clinch a berth in the Eastern Conference final, and they opened fast enough to make the building think the party was on. Montreal scored on its first three shots before Buffalo answered with seven unanswered goals, and the Sabres out-shot the Canadiens 36-22.
That swing left the home crowd sitting on a result it did not expect. Gilbert said, “We were ready for a party and now we're going home very disappointed,” after the final buzzer.
Fans Expected a Finish
At a downtown bar and inside the Bell Centre, fans had planned for a celebration before the puck dropped. Jason Castellan said, “Buffalo has momentum, but it's Game 7 and that's a hard game to win for either team,” and added, “You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don't take.”
Elvis Amber had come in expecting Montreal to finish the job. “I thought tonight was going to be the night,” he said, before adding that he was leaving for Beijing and would have to wake up Tuesday morning to watch Game 7.
Dobes and the Reverse
Jack Zegorski came from St-Lazare expecting a big party downtown. “Normally I watch at home, but I came out tonight figuring that’s when they’d win it all but of course it didn’t work out that way,” he said, calling the night “almost a mirror image of the last game in reverse.”
The comparison reaches back just over two weeks, when the Canadiens lost Game 6 to the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Bell Centre 1-0 in overtime and then won Game 7 in Tampa. Buffalo had its own reminder of how quickly a series can swing: on Thursday, the Sabres scored three goals on four shots on Jakub Dobes before collapsing in that earlier series.
Game 7 Pressure
Adrienne Campbell stayed with Dobes after the loss and told him, “My only message to (Dobes) is we love you, we believe in you and you're capable.” She added, “He'll absolutely pull through. We're all behind him.” The fan base now shifts from a postponed home celebration to a road back into the same pressure that followed the Tampa Bay series, with one more game deciding whether this run continues or ends.
