Sabres hope to bring road mentality into Game 7 at home against Canadiens

MONTREAL -- It’s official: Lindy Ruff has confirmed his attempts to get Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Second Round between his Buffalo Sabres and the Montreal Canadiens moved to the Bell Centre here have failed.

Given the fact that his Sabres are 5-1 on the road in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs thus far, you could understand why he would try.

“It didn't get switched,” the Sabres coach said wryly Sunday morning, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “But we're looking forward to giving our fans our best game.”

If it’s anything like Buffalo’s 8-3 victory in Game 6 Saturday, Sabres supporters will be downright giddy.

On a night where the deafening arena and the streets outside were ready to erupt into a Canadiens love-in with a Montreal victory that would propel them into the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Sabres impressively shut up an entire city with a run of seven consecutive goals to erase a 3-1 deficit and force a seventh and deciding game in Buffalo on Monday (7:30 p.m ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS, CBC).

Ruff was joking afterward, of course, about having the game played in Montreal. At the same time, he’s not naive nor stubborn enough to ignore how much better his team has been on the road than at home, where they’ve gone 2-4 this postseason.

Ruff shrugs his shoulders when asked why there is such a disparity between his team’s performances in KeyBank Center as opposed to away from it. His goal: to replicate the road conditions, on and off the ice, heading into their biggest home game in 15 years, the length of Buffalo’s playoff draught until this spring.

“We're still in that process, but we are going to try to change up the routine a little bit,” Ruff said.

Asked by NHL.com if that included having his team stay in a hotel Sunday night rather than the comfort of their own beds, Ruff replied, “Yeah, we're considering a lot of stuff. That is one of them, for sure.”

To that end, Ruff is relying on some of the intel he accrued during the previous Game 7 he coached in, a 4-0 victory by his New Jersey Devils against the rival New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference First Round on May 1, 2023.

“My last one was in Jersey, Game 7 against the Rangers,” he said. “I took a similar approach I did to Game 6 here where I kept them away from the rink and just brought them in just in time for the game. Because I think everybody realizes, you feel that pressure. I mean, we feel it and you got to imagine how they feel.

“We've gotten a great number of players that have never experienced it. But our group has got to a point where I believe that this is just another opportunity for our group and prove who we can be.”

The disparity between home and road records in these playoffs is eye popping. 

The Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights, the three teams that have already punched their tickets into the conference finals, are 13-2 this spring. The rest of the field? 19-32.

Why?

“Well, it makes me feel better because it's just not us,” Ruff said of the poor home records throughout the playoffs. “I think it sums up the parity, that teams aren't intimidated going into other teams' buildings, even how loud a venue it is, when you come here in the production for a game.

“I mean, the sound is deafening at times. It makes it really tough on communication on the bench. But I think at the end of the day, there's just a lot of good teams.”

Then there's the factor of home teams wanting to entertain their supporters and losing their structure in the process. 

“Probably both teams want the result badly for the fanbase when you’re at home,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said after Game 6, adding that “we wanted this for our fans, for ourselves. We just didn’t play well.”

Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki agreed, saying there were no excuses. 

“I think guys maybe want to do too much here to impress the fans and give them back some love,” he said. “But we can’t let that affect us mentally.”

On Saturday, it did. 

As for the Sabres, captain Rasmus Dahlin, author of a five-point night (one goals, four assists) summed it up perfectly.

“We play more aggressive,” Dahlin said. “I like our road game. We’re just letting it loose out there.”

Which the Sabres will need to do in Game 7, a situation the franchise has had very little success in in the past.

Since the Sabres inaugural season of 1970-71, only once have they won a Game 7. That came on a Derek Plante overtime winner that gave Buffalo a 3-2 win over the Ottawa Senators in the conference quarterfinals on April 29, 1997.

You want perspective on that? Plante’s heroics came 10,611 days prior to the puck being dropped on Monday.

Now the Sabres mission: find a way to post their second Game 7 victory in franchise history.

For the Canadiens, the situation is much fresher. They won a Game 7 just two weeks ago, a 2-1 road win against the Tampa Bay Lightning in their first-round series.

For the young Sabres, who will be sailing into uncharted waters, they’ll have to pick the brain of their veteran coach who’s been here before.

“The goal is to make Game 7 like a Game 6,” Ruff said. “Move the puck quick, play with a lot of pace, keep our feet moving in the offensive zone, and close real quickly in the defensive zone. 

“That's our recipe.”

Whether it’s one for success remains to be seen.

— NHL.com senior writer Amalie Benjamin contributed to this report