RALEIGH, N.C. \u2013 The Montreal Canadiens never flinched in winning two Game 7s on the road to reach the Eastern Conference Final. Opening on the road again was no different, even against a well-rested top seed that had yet to lose in the postseason.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens pounced for four first-period goals on slow-starting Carolina \u2014 coming off the longest postseason break in more than a century \u2014 and beat the Hurricanes 6-2 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we could come in here and try to get off to a good start to the series,\u201d Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki said after a three-assist night. \u201cWe\u2019re happy with the result, but they\u2019re definitely going to be better than what they were tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cole Caufield and Phillip Danault scored in the opening four minutes, Alexandre Texier followed four minutes later, and Ivan Demidov finished a breakaway for a shocking 4-1 lead midway through the opening period. That came against a team that hadn’t allowed more than two goals in an 8-0 playoff start.<\/p>\n
Juraj Slafkovksy scored twice in the third period for Montreal, the second on a late empty-netter, while Jakub Dobes had 24 saves.<\/p>\n
Game 2 is Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes were the first team to sweep their first two playoff rounds<\/a> since the NHL went to best-of-seven series in all four rounds in 1987. But that led to a lengthy break of 11 days, the longest rest for any team before starting the next playoff run since at least 1920, while waiting on the Canadiens to battle their way past Tampa Bay<\/a> and Buffalo<\/a>.<\/p>\n That led to the rest-versus-rust discussion about the Hurricanes, along with how well the Canadiens would pivot from those to-the-limit wins.<\/p>\n And outside of Seth Jarvis beating Dobes just 33 seconds in, the Canadiens answered that question resoundingly in those opening minutes to extend Carolina’s misery in this round.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think we were very sharp, to put it bluntly,\u201d Carolina coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cOur top guys had tough nights. That\u2019s not going to work at this time of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of Carolina\u2019s success comes from pressuring opponents in the offensive zone and minimizing chances going the other way. But Montreal effectively moved the puck out of danger against Carolina’s aggressive pressure early, setting up clean breakouts, open-ice space and multiple breakaway chances at Frederik Andersen.<\/p>\n \u201cThe execution was there right off the bat,\u201d Canadiens center Jake Evans said.<\/p>\n Danault’s goal was a full-speed breakaway right up the middle off a feed from Alexandre Carrier, while Demidov went forehand-backhand-forehand to beat Andersen for the 4-1 lead with 8:28 left in the first.<\/p>\n Andersen was leading the postseason<\/a> in goals-against average (1.12) and save percentage (.950), but finished with just 16 saves.<\/p>\n Eric Robinson also scored for Carolina, which is in the Eastern final for the third time in four years and fourth time in the current eight-season playoff run under Rod Brind’Amour. But the Hurricanes are now 1-13 in those games, including sweeps against Boston in 2019 and Florida in 2023.<\/p>\n Carolina’s loss meant the two Stanley Cup favorites both lost the opener of the conference finals. Colorado lost at home<\/a> to Vegas on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP NHL playoffs: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/stanley-cup<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. \u2013 The Montreal Canadiens never flinched in winning two Game 7s on the road to reach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[1603,2002,265,971,1111,1239,5,638,909,264,21,5147,4,1808,1535,1177,43],"class_list":["post-580824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal-canadiens","tag-alexandre-carrier","tag-alexandre-texier","tag-canadiens","tag-cole-caufield","tag-eric-robinson","tag-frederik-andersen","tag-hockey","tag-ivan-demidov","tag-jakub-dobes","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-montrealcanadiens","tag-nhl","tag-phillip-danault","tag-rod-brindamour","tag-seth-jarvis","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116616222668168355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}