Schedule change at Bell Centre announced hours before puck drop for Game 3
Martin St-Louis just flipped his playoff routine. The Canadiens confirmed a mandatory morning skate at Bell Centre ahead of Game 3 against the Buffalo Sabres tonight.
Puck drop is 7 PM at Centre Bell. The series sits 1-1 heading into the homestand, and the bench boss is suddenly back to a traditional matchday script.
For the two road games in Buffalo, the head coach scrapped the morning skate entirely. Sunday morning at 10:30, that approach went out the window.
The timing is loud. Montreal is coming off a 5-1 thrashing of the Sabres in Game 2, the kind of road performance that usually buys a coach the right to leave well enough alone.
Instead, St-Louis pulled his group onto the ice. That tells you something about either the message he wants to send or the lineup decisions he's still working through.
Brendan Gallagher, Jayden Struble and Oliver Kapanen all sat for Game 2. Patrik Laine remains on IR with an abdomen issue, capped at 5 games and 1 point on the season.
Lineup intrigue grows around the bottom six
Gallagher closed the regular season with 7 goals and 23 points in 77 games. Kapanen finished with 22 goals as a full-timer, then went pointless over his last 10.
Struble logged 59 games on the back end with a +4 rating. The defenseman went +3 over his last 5 healthy nights before the playoff scratch.
A morning skate hands the head coach one more look at line combinations and pairings. It also gives him a chance to test bodies that need reps, without tipping his starter.
Nick Suzuki has carried this team all spring. The captain finished with 101 points and a +37 rating, and he's pulled the top line through every shift in the series so far.
Cole Caufield potted 51 goals in the regular season but has gone scoreless across his last 5 games. The trigger man is overdue, and a home crowd has a way of breaking those droughts.
Why mess with a winning formula after a 5-1 statement game? Because Martin St-Louis clearly thinks something needs adjusting before the puck drops on the most important game of the spring.
Lane Hutson keeps quarterbacking the back end with 78 points on the year. The blue line is humming, but a coach who calls a surprise skate isn't a coach who feels settled.
Buffalo finished 50-23-9 with 109 points and a +47 goal differential. They are not a team that hands away three games in a row, and the next 60 minutes shape the entire round.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 9, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Jackson Blake | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Brock Faber | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Kirill Kaprizov | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Taylor Hall | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Quinn Hughes | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Mats Zuccarello | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Matthew Boldy | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alex Bump | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Tyson Foerster | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Ryan Hartman | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Logan Stankoven | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Christian Dvorak | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nazem Kadri | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Travis Konecny | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Gabriel Landeskog | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Porter Martone | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Michael McCarron | - | 1 | 1 | |
| K'Andre Miller | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jaccob Slavin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||