Canadiens Salvage Start to Season Thanks to Suzuki

In that one, Suzuki and the team’s other stars were held off the scoresheet, having to rely on their bottom six to sneak them past a highly motivated Leafs team with something to prove in their home opener, after they had missed the playoffs last season and made moves to vastly improve over the summer. In the Canadiens’ latest “effort,” they found themselves at risk of heading into their home opener next Tuesday having to prove themselves as merely capable of returning to the postseason too.

Maybe the Canadiens still do, seeing as it will be against the Stanley Cup-champion Carolina Hurricanes, against whom the Habs lost in Round 3 last spring. At least now, Habs fans know they can compete. Whether they will is of course a different story, but after they battled back from four goals down to force overtime, scoring two within a span 24 seconds, starting with Chris Kreider’s first with the team at the 18:52 mark, it is clear they flipped a switch of some kind.

With goalie Jakub Dobes’ net empty and the Canadiens running purely off desperation, Suzuki earned the primary assist on Kreider’s goal by feeding the power forward from behind the net into the slot. Literally seconds later, he followed that up with a cross-crease pass to Ivan Demidov, who buried it to tie the game.

Cardiac Canadiens Fail to Play a Full 60 Again

While the Canadiens fell short of completing what would have been their second comeback in two games, after co-leading the NHL in games of the sort in 2025-26 with 26, the good news is they have seemingly picked up where they left off, when they earned 106 points in the standings, to finish within striking distance of winning the Atlantic Division. The bad news is it took them nearly five periods to do it, seeing as Game 1 only barely qualifies after the Leafs scored in the first minute and the Habs tied it soon thereafter.

In Game 2, it was almost the opposite situation, with Cole Caufield opening the scoring within a few minutes of the game’s opening whistle, as the Canadiens dominated early before they let the Penguins back into the game. First Mike Matheson took an ill-advised interference penalty on Sidney Crosby that led to an Evgeni Malkin power-play goal.

Next, to open the second period, a long-range wrist shot from defenseman Declan Carlile eluded goalie Jakub Dobes. Some may blame Dobes for the loss, as, in allowing six overall, he makes for an easy target. That would be a lazy assessment, because, by the time the Penguins had made it 5-1, everyone on the Habs had gotten into the act of making them look as bad as possible, technically including head coach Martin St. Louis, as Goal #5 came on a power play after the Habs had been called for a too-many-men bench minor.

With the score 5-3 after a late second-period goal from Suzuki and Caufield’s second of the game early the third, the Penguins came close to shutting the door on the comeback when Egor Chinakhov seemingly scored, but St. Louis used a coach’s challenge to successfully get it called back on an uncalled offside. In so doing, he gave the Canadiens a second chance to redeem themselves. To a degree they did, but it speaks volumes of Suzuki’s heroics, in first jumpstarting the comeback and then setting up the two late goals, that St. Louis’ challenge and Mr. Saturday Night Caufield’s two goals ended up as mere footnotes.

For a time, it looked like the Canadiens would become simply the latest victims of an unexpected Stanley Cup contender in the Penguins, after the latter had vanquished the rival Philadelphia Flyers 7-0 to open their season. Then Suzuki went to work, going end to end on his first goal of the season, trying to make something happen. When passing the puck didn’t work, with Ben Kindel getting his stick in the lane between Suzuki and Caufield, the former simply split the defense, before roofing it past goalie Arturs Silovs with a backhand.

It was the type of play that typically lifts people out of their seats, even if the feeling was fleeting looking at the direness of the situation in which the Habs still found themselves. By the end of the night, despite the loss, a sense of quiet confidence (instead of what admittedly would have been euphoria if they had won) seemed to take hold instead. There’s a sense they’ve now got this. Suzuki does at least. The ship has seemingly been righted, by none other than the captain.