Dobes rewards Canadiens ‘trust,’ bounces back in Game 5 win

BUFFALO -- Jakub Dobes reacted as if his fate was sealed.

The Montreal Canadiens goaltender had just been beaten for the third time in four shots Thursday, this one a slider along the ice that a beer league goalie should have been able to stop.

Unfortunately for the Canadiens, Dobes didn’t.

Instead, the soft wrister by Konsta Helenius went through the rookie’s legs, giving the Buffalo Sabres the lead at 10:15 of the first period in a pivotal Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Second Round.

Dobes looked to the heavens as if he knew he was about to be pulled.

Except interim goalie coach Marco Marciano opted against it.

In the end, that proved to be the turning point in Montreal’s 6-3 comeback victory at KeyBank Center, giving the Canadiens a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series heading to raucous Bell Centre for Game 6 on Saturday (8 p.m. ET: CBC, TVAS, SN, ABC).

With the entire building seemingly expecting Dobes to get the hook, if not the rookie himself, coach Martin St. Louis had one of his assistants call to the press box to get Marciano’s opinion on the situation.

The reply: Keep him in.

It proved to be the shrewdest of calls, given that Dobes stopped the remaining 32 shots he faced while his teammates scored four consecutive times for the victory.

“Ultimately it’s probably my decision, right?” St. Louis said afterward. “But I feel like the goaltending position is the one position that I can’t help much, you know? And so I try to stay out of it, right, and not be emotionally driven and be upset that we’re down.

“The first period was very chaotic on both sides.”

Asked about Marciano, St. Louis replied: “I feel you have to empower the people that are actually certified for the position. So that’s what I did.”

And, because of that, Marco Marciano is now becoming a household name in Montreal.

Marciano was promoted to the Canadiens from Laval of the American Hockey League, where he was serving as goalie coach, on Jan. 28 after the team fired Eric Raymond, who had previously held the position. At that time, Montreal’s goalies had combined for a save percentage of .884, which ranked 28th among the League's 32 teams at the time.

The move obviously has paid strong dividends, given the Canadiens are now one win away from a berth in the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes.

With a new lease on life thanks to Marciano, Dobes came into the Montreal dressing room in the first intermission Thursday vowing to make amends for his wobbly performance in the game’s first 20 minutes.

He did just that.

“A couple tough bounces lately,” the 24-year-old said. “But I just feel like the one lesson I learned from today is I’ve just got to have a better body language for the boys -- don't let them know that I'm not feeling maybe my best.

“So I feel like we talked a little bit during intermission. We met up in the locker room and we were really excited.”

He also had a message for St. Louis.

“I told him thank you for leaving me and trying to prove myself,” Dobes said. “That's a big part, to have your trust of your coach and I will never disrespect it. I appreciate it and the only thing I was trying to do just give some momentum back to the team and try to keep it tight and it worked out.”

He gave his teammates even more reason to believe in him in the first minute of the second period when he lunged his right leg out to make a sprawling stop of a Tage Thompson breakaway. That was more like the Dobes the Canadiens have been accustomed to during this playoff run, one in which he has played every minute.

“We were only down by one goal. And I feel like that gave us a little bit of momentum,” he said. “And then the guys responded very well.

“Yeah, every save for me, I try to have the same mentality after a save, just focus on the next one. It was a good save, but definitely I was keep focusing to (not give) them a bigger lead than that.”

From that point on, he kept the Sabres off the board while Josh Anderson, Jake Evans, Nick Suzuki and Ivan Demidov scored four unanswered goals to seal the win for Montreal.

Through it all, Suzuki said the team never lost faith in its goalie.

“I just think he’s super confident in himself,” the Canadiens captain said of Dobes. “I think he puts the work in off the ice to have his mental training where it needs to be. 

“He’s a fighter, he wants to be in the battle with the guys, so he’s got a perfect kind of attitude.”

Not to mention the confidence of his goalie coach, no matter how bleak things may have looked.

At least on this night, anyway.