For much of the spring, it was looking like the Montreal Canadiens would be the team the Buffalo Sabres were going to start their return to the postseason matched up against. One Atlantic Division Banner later, that timeline changed, but the “inevitable” arrived with a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals on the line.

Full Season

(Data per Evolving Hockey)	5-on-5	All Situations
Goal Share	53.38% (9th, BUF 4th)	52.80% (10th, BUF 5th)
Shot on Goal Share	49.23% (22nd, BUF 13th)	48.98% (21st, BUF 20th)
Shot Share	48.84% (20th, BUF 14th)	48.68% (22nd, BUF 18th)
Shot Quality Share	48.80% (23rd, BUF 14th)	49.60% (20th, BUF 16th)
Goal Differential Per 60	2.82-2.46 (5th-16th , BUF 4th-11th)	3.37-3.01 (7th-16th, BUF 5th-11th)
Shot Differential Per 60	54.82-57.42 (22nd-17th, BUF 18th-16th)	55.56-58.58 (23rd-17th, BUF 21st-18th)
Shot Quality Per 60	2.75-2.89 (16th-23rd, BUF 11th-15th)	3.55-3.61 (11th-22nd, BUF 12th-17th)

Projected Roster, Kind of

Key Canadiens’ players who can impact the series

This is not as easy as it was for the Bruins, as it appears from the NST lineup data that Martin St. Louis has done a lot of line shuffling across the regular season and first round. In fact, the Daily Faceoff listed second line had zero playing time together in the regular season. If you’d like to see the full tables, they are sourced below. The only two lines that played together more than 300 minutes each have Juraj Slafkovsky on the right wing.

The third and fourth lines are showing their playoff TOI only.

			TOI	Goals	Expected Goals	Shot Attempts
Cole Caufield	Nick Suzuki	Juraj Slafkovsky	521:01	33-14 (70.21%)	15.38-14.08 (52.21%)	590-471 (55.61%)
Brendan Gallagher	Alex Newhook	Ivan Demidov	—	—	—	—
Jake Evans	Phllip Danault	Josh Anderson	37:43	2-0 (100%)	1.22-1.03 (54.29%)	26-39 (40.00%)
Zack Bolduc	Kirby Dach	Alexandre Texier	22:37	6-0 (100%)	1.05-0.74 (58.60%)	20-21 (48.78%)

On defense, the status of Noah Dobson still is uncertain as for who he will play with and how much he will play after only returning from injury on Sunday for Game 7. We’ll list him on the third pair for now as was the case to start that game despite not having played too much with Jayden Struble. In contrast, across 900 minutes at 5-on-5 together in the regular season, Dobson and Mike Matheson had a 46.91/44.55/45.83 GF%/CF%/xGF% slash line.

		TOI	Goals	Expected Goals	Shot Attempts
Mike Matheson	Alexandre Carrier	174:10	11-11 (50.00%)	9.11-9.41 (49.21%)	174-187 (48.20%)
Kaiden Guhle	Lane Hutson	181:06	7-6 (53.85%)	8.41-7.43 (53.10%)	163-168 (49.24%)
Jayden Struble	Noah Dobson	44:50	1-2 (33.33%)	1.75-1.54 (53.17%)	31-42 (42.47%)

Regular Season Head-To-Head

October 20: Montreal Canadiens 4 – Buffalo Sabres 2 (Hockey-Reference, HockeyViz, Moneypuck, Natural Stat Trick)

January 15: Buffalo Sabres 5 – Montreal Canadiens 3 (Hockey-Reference, HockeyViz, Moneypuck, Natural Stat Trick)

January 22: Buffalo Sabres 4 – Montreal Canadiens 2 (Hockey-Reference, HockeyViz, Moneypuck, Natural Stat Trick)

January 31: Montreal Canadiens 4 – Buffalo Sabres 2 (Hockey-Reference, HockeyViz, Moneypuck, Natural Stat Trick)

Overlap with Amerks

Since there are actually zero former Sabres on the Canadiens, the nostalgia section of this preview goes down to The American League, where there have been two Rochester vs Laval playoff series post-covid.

The 2021-22 series saw the Rocket sweep the Amerks in the second round. Jack Quinn and Peyton Krebs were the only Sabres that played for the Amerks in that postseason, while zero current Canadiens were part of that 2022 Rocket playoff run (Cole Caufield appeared in 6 regular season games only).

Last season, the Amerks and Rocket exchanged wins back and forth for all five games, but Laval once again got the upper hand in the second round. Jiri Kulich, Noah Ostlund, Tyson Kozak, Josh Dunne, and Zach Metsa were a part of that series from the Buffalo playoff roster, with Devon Levi, Konsta Helenius, Vsevolod Komarov, Ryan Johnson, Anton Wahlberg, and Riley Fiddler-Schultz representing the postseason callups that were parts of that series. Only Oliver Kapanen played for both the 2025 Laval playoffs and appeared for the Canadiens in the first round series with the Lightning. Jacob Fowler is currently backing up Jakub Dobes, who played in all 7 games of the Tampa series.

(Photo Credit: Chris O’Meara, AP photo)