The same could be said for all these Canadiens, goofy goalie and all.
They laugh at and with their goalie and, for that matter, with each other. They don’t buckle under pressure; they embrace it. With Caufield, a 51-goal scorer during the regular season, barely contributing offensively entering Game 3, they didn’t use it as an excuse and relied on depth scoring to get this deep into the second round. And when they went 26:55 without a shot in Game 7 in their first round sudden-death showdown with the Tampa Bay Lightning, they still found a way to win 2-1 on an Alex Newhook third-period goal that he swatted out of the air from behind the goal line that bounced off the back off goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy and into the net.
Dobes was greeted after that series victory with a shaving cream shower from his teammates. Coach Martin St. Louis’ postgame speech emulated a Leonardo DiCaprio scene from the hit movie “Wolf of Wall Street” punctuated by the phrase, “We’re not leaving!”
No, they’re not.
And with every passing day, with every game that takes them deeper into this playoff run, you can see their swagger and belief mushrooming, both on the ice and off.
Make no mistake. These aren’t just kids enjoying the ride. After seven one-goal games against Tampa Bay followed by a 4-2 loss to the Sabres in Game 1, the Canadiens have become dominant. They’ve outscored Buffalo 11-3 in the past six periods. As Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff said afterwards: “They are a hell of a team.”
One that is dissecting the Sabres loosey-goosey structure and pouncing on mistakes.
“We’re just using our speed and trusting our process that we can take over a game with our whole five-man game,” Suzuki said. “They’re a team that thrives on the rush, so we try to limit those chances and forecheck them as hard as we can.”
“Right now, we are having success. And we want to keep it going.”
With a goofy goalie who’s only allowed seven goals through the first three games of this series.
With a deep roster that has featured 12 different goal-scorers through 10 playoff games.
And if the Sabres can’t adjust, the beat will go on for a Canadiens team that continues to ascend.