Montreal Canadiens forward Cole Caufield scored his second of the game in overtime to lift the Habs to a 5-4 victory over the visiting Seattle Kraken on Tuesday. It was the Canadiens’ home opener, in which they held three separate leads before having to catch up late to force the extra frame to salvage at least one point. They ended up getting two (as did Caufield), much to the delight of the Bell Center faithful.
Summary of the game
With the Canadiens leading 3-2 just five minutes into the third, Kraken defenseman Jamie Oleksiak beat a screened Sam Montembeault from the point to tie the game for the third time. Instead of taking the lead again, as had been the case every time the Kraken had scored up to that point, the Habs were forced to surrender the 4-3 lead when Jared McCann fired a blocked shot from Brandon Montour three minutes later past Montembeault, who made a modest 18 saves on a night when the home side honored the recently departed legend Ken Dryden.
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Canadian forward Ivan Demidov evened the score in dramatic fashion with just under three minutes remaining in regulation time. As the Mason Marchment penalty for holding defender Alexandre Carrier expired, Patrik Laine fed Demidov, who picked out and beat a spread-out Joey Daccord from close range, who made 17 saves in the loss.
It was Carrier’s 300th career game. To celebrate, he also collected the second assist on Alex Newhook’s opening goal, who also happened to be celebrating his 300th game. However, Demidov also played the biggest role there: he found Newhook on the side of the net on a beautiful seeing-eye pass that the first had to tip just past Daccord. The Calder Memorial Trophy favourite’s heroics were arguably only overshadowed by those of Caufield, who also scored to make it 2-1, after Jaden Schwartz had equalized. After a Chandler Stephenson giveaway in the corner, Caufield fired the ball home from the spot.
It was a slightly different situation in overtime, where with each team suddenly struggling to generate offense, defenseman Lane Hutson dropped the puck for Caufield on a faceoff win deep in the Kraken’s zone. Caufield then closed in on Daccord and hunted for the winning goal.
Both teams next play Thursday, as the 2-0-1 Kraken visits the Ottawa Senators on the second leg of their six-game road trip. The 3-1 Canadiens, meanwhile, will play their second game of their current four-game handstand against the Nashville Predators.
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