Canadiens Have Three Goals Disallowed, Then Win 1-0 in a Sixth-Round Shootout

The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings 1-0 on Saturday night in a game in which Montreal put the puck in the net four times and was credited with a goal for none of them in 65 minutes of play. Three apparent goals were disallowed, one by each route the NHL gives its officials to take a goal away, and the winner finally arrived in the sixth round of a shootout from the player who had been at the centre of two of the three reversals, Reuters reports.

What were the three disallowed goals in Montreal?

One of each kind. Cole Caufield appeared to open the scoring 1:16 into the game from along the goal line, but video review reversed it because the puck did not completely cross the line, Reuters reports. In the second period, Zach Bolduc scored at 7:05 and saw the goal waved off immediately, with no review needed, because Jake Evans had interfered with goaltender Daniil Tarasov in the crease. In overtime, Alexandre Texier scored what looked like the winner at 2:37, and Detroit coach Todd McLellan used his challenge: the review showed Bolduc offside on the entry, and the goal came off the board, Reuters reports.

A goal-line review, a crease ruling and a coach’s challenge are three separate systems with three separate standards of proof, and Montreal lost to all three in one night. It is the same review machinery that overturned Frank Nazar’s night into a match penalty and a suspension in the Islanders-Blackhawks game last week, except this time it was pointed at the scoreboard rather than at a player.

Why did the Caufield review fail to find the puck?

Because the NHL’s standard is conclusive evidence, and the cameras did not have it. Caufield’s shot from a sharp angle appeared to beat Tarasov at 1:16, but no replay angle located the puck fully over the line, so the call on the ice stood, Dose.ca reports. It is the oldest frustration in the video-review era: a puck can be almost certainly in and still not count, because almost certainly is not the standard. Montreal’s night started with the strictest version of that rule and got stranger from there.

How did Zach Bolduc end up deciding the game anyway?

By being involved in nearly everything that did not count, and then the one thing that did. Bolduc had a goal disallowed in the second period, hit a post with 8:07 left in the first, and was the player ruled offside on Texier’s erased overtime winner, Reuters reports. In the shootout he was Montreal’s sixth shooter, scored the only goal of the tiebreaker past Tarasov, and watched Fowler stop Danielson to close the win, HabsHQ reports.

That arc is the reason this game travels beyond a 1-0 scoreline. The league’s review systems had spent 65 minutes telling Bolduc no in two different ways, and the game’s last act handed the deciding attempt to the same player. A night that could have been a grievance story became a resilience one, which is not how these evenings usually end for the team on the wrong side of three reviews. The Rangers, by contrast, spent Saturday learning their season in net now belongs to a 24-year-old after Igor Shesterkin was ruled out for the year.

What did the goaltenders have to do with it?

Everything except score. Jacob Fowler made 30 saves through regulation and overtime and stopped all six Detroit shootout attempts, and Tarasov matched him with 30 saves and five shootout stops, Reuters reports. It was the second career shutout for each goaltender. Fowler’s biggest moments came at even strength: a stop on Alex DeBrincat’s open backhand late in the second period and a breakaway save on Andrew Copp early in the third, Reuters reports.

Fowler’s emergence is its own quiet subplot in a league suddenly short of healthy starters, a week in which Connor Hellebuyck’s holdout in Winnipeg has become a running public count of money lost. Montreal snapped a three-game winless run (0-2-1) with the win, Reuters reports, and Detroit dropped its second game in two nights. Kaiden Guhle also made his season debut for Montreal after summer adductor surgery, Reuters reports.

What did the Larkin chants actually sound like up close? (Update, October 11)

A recruitment pitch, sustained for a full night. Sportsnet reports the chants started before Saturday’s game got underway and grew louder as it went on, and the Detroit Free Press reports they came in spurts through the first couple of periods. The context is what makes them more than crowd noise: Sportsnet reports Montreal was not on the list Larkin submitted after Detroit’s 10th straight missed postseason, and was not added when he reportedly expanded it to include Dallas, Washington, Colorado and Tampa Bay alongside Minnesota, Florida and Las Vegas. The Free Press adds the contractual reality: no Canadian team is on his reported list of exemptions, and his full no-trade clause means no move happens without his consent.

Larkin’s own response was careful in both rooms. He called the moment interesting, said he had never imagined it in that building, and praised the fans and the atmosphere before returning to the game, Sportsnet and the Free Press report. Asked about a Canadian team, he declined to go there, pointing to his current team and its own building, the Free Press reports. Lucas Raymond’s version was shorter: a first time for everything, and a claim the players barely hear it.

McLellan’s was the admission that will follow Detroit home. He first credited his group for shielding each other and focusing on preparation, then conceded he would be lying if he said everything going on, the Larkin situation and the Simon Edvinsson contract stalemate together, was not a distraction, the Free Press and Sportsnet report. He then closed the subject in terms that guarantee it reopens on Tuesday, saying he is tired of talking about it and will not talk about it anymore. Detroit, 1-3-1 and without a top-line centre behind Larkin, hosts New Jersey on October 13 with the same questions waiting.

What happens next for Montreal and Detroit?

Montreal gets a win its review luck said it should not have, and a goaltending question in the best sense: Fowler has now stolen a game his team scored zero legal goals in. Detroit leaves with a point, a successful coach’s challenge as the night’s decisive coaching act, and the Larkin noise still following it, with the Bell Centre crowd chanting for the former captain and then booing the shootout attempt Fowler stopped, Reuters reports. The three reviews will be re-litigated in Montreal all week; the standings will record only that the Canadiens found the one goal nobody could review away. A week later, the same building got the cleaner version of an extra-time finish: Caufield’s overtime winner against Buffalo set a franchise record, his 14th, nine seconds after the Sabres missed a 3-on-1 to win it. A shootout rescued Montreal here; three nights later in Philadelphia, a shootout finished off the Flyers’ record-breaking winless start instead.

Montreal is no longer alone in the two-disallowals club. Colorado had two goals wiped out in the first ten minutes against Dallas on Wednesday, the second on the season’s first distinct-kicking-motion ruling, and lost in a shootout as well. Ottawa joined the pattern on Thursday, when the Senators had two goals wiped out in one period by two different review routes and still beat the Islanders in a shootout.