Zach Benson had two assists, and Alex Lyon made 26 saves for the Sabres, who are the No. 1 seed in the Atlantic Division. They are playing in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2007.
Nick Suzuki and Kirby Dach scored, and Jakub Dobes made 12 saves for the Canadiens, who are the No. 3 seed in the Atlantic.
Game 2 of the best-of-7 series will be here on Friday (7 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC).
Doan gave Buffalo a 1-0 lead at 4:31 of the first period. Benson’s leg kick in the left face-off circle fooled Dobes into thinking he was going to shoot, and he instead sent a pass behind the skates of sliding Montreal defenseman Noah Dobson over to Doan, who was driving to the back door for the tap-in.
McLeod scored on the power play to make it 2-0 at 13:26. Benson collected the puck in front and quickly fed it to McLeod on the goal line, where he put it into an open right side.
Suzuki cut it to 2-1 with a goal on the man-advantage at 19:16. Juraj Slafkovsky slid a pass through the crease to Suzuki, who tapped it in from the left post.
Jordan Greenway beat Dobes with a wrist shot from the top of the left circle that went bar down to push the lead to 3-1 at 3:32 of the second period.
Bowen Byram increased it to 4-1 on the power play at 9:01, putting a snap shot over a screened Dobes’ blocker from the top of the slot.
Dach made it 4-2 at 16:31. Lyon stopped his initial shot from in close, but the rebound came back to a falling Dach, who backhanded it over the goalie’s left arm from the right side while falling to the ice.
