Hutson owns turnover that led to Game 3 OT loss for Canadiens

MONTREAL -- Lane Hutson blamed himself, repeatedly.

"It would be nice to be up 2-1, but we're not because of me," the Montreal Canadiens defenseman said. "It's frustrating."

Hutson fell on his sword and let the hockey world know it was his unforced turnover that eventually led to Andrei Svechnikov's goal at 14:06 of overtime, which gave the Carolina Hurricanes a 3-2 win in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final at Bell Centre on Monday.

Carolina leads the best-of-7 series 2-1.

"Yeah, I mean, I didn't love the play, but whatever," Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. "It's what's next and we didn't do what's next. We didn't get the job done."

The play started when Hurricanes forward Mark Jankowski flipped the puck into the Canadiens zone from the red line, sending Hutson back to retrieve it. He got it on his stick with 6:13 remaining in overtime and wheeled around Montreal's net, head up.

Hutson saw captain Nick Suzuki up the ice on the left side at Carolina's blue line, but he didn't feel that was the best place to go with the puck.

"I'm trying to make a possession play," Hutson said. "I saw 'Suzy' and I didn't want to just pass it to a flat-footed 'Suzy,' have them tip it in and just get a free breakout again. So, I tried to make a possession play."

Hutson's lateral pass toward Juraj Slafkovsky didn't have enough on it, though. Svechnikov easily intercepted it in the neutral zone and drove the puck right to the net, splitting Hutson and defenseman Noah Dobson.

The puck then went toward the right corner, where Svechnikov retrieved it. He brought it back up into the circle and passed across to Seth Jarvis.

Meanwhile, the Canadiens had time to recover and defend, but they were a step slow, chasing.

Hutson skated toward Jarvis, but not in time to stop his pass back to Svechnikov, who put a wrist shot on net from above the right circle. Sebastian Aho did enough to outmuscle Slafkovsky in front, and the puck went into the net off a body for the game-winning goal.

"It sucks because it ended up going in," Hutson said.

Hutson felt particularly bad for goalie Jakub Dobes.

Dobes made 35 saves and was arguably Montreal's best player, certainly its most important. But it didn't look like he could see the shot from Svechnikov that went into the net 12 seconds after Hutson's turnover and 19 seconds after he got the puck behind the net.

"He battles so hard," Hutson said of Dobes. "Sucks that I just blew it for him, but it is what it is."

He'll have a chance to make amends in Game 4 here on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, HBO MAX).

"We definitely have another level," Hutson said.