Alex Newhook Did It Again — Canadiens Beat Sabres in Game 7 Overtime

If you wrote Alex Newhook into a hockey movie script, the producer would send the script back. Two Game 7s in one postseason. Two overtime winners. One scored on the road. That's not realism — that's wish fulfillment.

Except it actually happened Monday night in Buffalo.

The Game 7 nobody expected this way

Montreal jumped to a 2-0 first-period lead, courtesy of Phillip Danault and Zack Bolduc, with Nick Suzuki setting up the power play that produced Bolduc's marker. The Canadiens looked like a team that had figured Buffalo out and was about to close the series in 60 minutes.

Then Buffalo did what Buffalo does — kept the building alive. Mattias Samuelsson cut it to 2-1 in the second. Owen Power set up Rasmus Dahlin's tying goal in the third. Overtime in a Game 7 with a sold-out KeyBank Center on its feet.

Midway through OT, Newhook found the back of the net past Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. Series over. Sabres' season over. Canadiens move on.

What Newhook just put his name on

With Monday's goal, Newhook became:

• The fourth player in Montreal Canadiens history to score an overtime Game 7 winner.
• The first Montreal player to do it on the road.
• The owner of two Game 7 OT winners in a single postseason — a feat that lives in a very short list of NHL playoff history.

For context, this is a player who was acquired by the Canadiens partly as a depth piece. He's now closing in on becoming the most consequential mid-tier acquisition in recent franchise memory. Not Crosby money, not Matthews money — just a player who keeps scoring the goal his team needs at the exact moment they need it.

Jakub Dobes had the night of his career

Lost in the headline is the fact that the Canadiens needed an unreal goaltending performance to even get to overtime. Jakub Dobes posted a .949 save percentage and made one save on Tage Thompson in the third period that single-handedly changed the trajectory of the game.

Dobes was pulled in Game 6 — yanked, with all the visible-from-orbit drama that pulling a starter creates. Game 7 was a referendum on whether he could handle the moment. He answered with one of the best Game 7 goaltending performances of this entire playoff run.

What's next for Montreal

The Carolina Hurricanes. Who are 8-0 in the playoffs. Who haven't lost a game in nearly a month. Who have been the most efficient team in the entire bracket and are sitting at home, well-rested, watching their first-round and second-round opponents go to the limit while they get a full week off.

The Eastern Conference Final opens Thursday at 8 p.m. ET at PNC Arena in Raleigh.

The matchup looks brutal on paper. Carolina is the deepest team in the East, plays the most aggressive forecheck in the league, and has gotten elite goaltending from a tandem that doesn't even have a definitive starter. But Montreal just won two Game 7s in this postseason, including one on the road. The Canadiens have one quality nobody else in this bracket has — they have already proven they don't break under playoff pressure.

What this means for Buffalo

The Sabres' season ends, but the story is bigger than the loss. Buffalo just snapped a 14-year playoff drought, won a first-round series for the first time in nearly a generation, and pushed a hot Canadiens team to overtime in Game 7. The standing ovation as they left the ice told the real story.

This team has a foundation now. Owen Power, Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin — that's a legitimate playoff-caliber core. The work in Buffalo isn't done, but it's started.

The bottom line

The Canadiens get the Hurricanes, the toughest matchup in the East, and head into the conference final as the team nobody picked. That's familiar territory for this group. Alex Newhook is now the player in this postseason who shows up when the game gets to extra time. And the Sabres' fans get to keep one piece of memorabilia: the standing ovation they gave a team that finally gave them something to stand for.