BUFFALO — The nhl playoff bracket tightened sharply on Tuesday, May 12, as the Buffalo Sabres and Vegas Golden Knights each won critical games to move one victory from the conference finals. Buffalo beat the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 in Montreal, and Vegas outlasted the Anaheim Ducks 3-2 in overtime.
For Montreal, the loss erased a chance to take a 3-1 lead and turned the series into a best-of-three battle. For Vegas, the overtime win in Game 5 gave the Golden Knights a 3-2 lead after the clubs had split the first four contests. The results also left both series with a very short road left to the next round, with Buffalo able to seize control on Thursday.
Buffalo needed only a few minutes to make its mark. Mattias Samuelsson started the scoring in the first period, but Montreal answered back with goals from Alex Newhook and Cole Caufield to take the lead. The Canadiens looked ready to push the series to the edge before Tage Thompson tied it for Buffalo and Zach Benson scored a power-play goal after Montreal received a four-minute power play late in the second period.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen held the Sabres together long enough for that swing to stand up, stopping 28 of 30 shots. That was the difference in a game that could have put Montreal within one win of the conference finals and instead sent the series into a final, tense stretch.
Vegas faced a different kind of test in Game 5 against Anaheim. Beckett Sennecke scored a power-play goal for the Ducks in the first period, and Pavel Dorofeyev answered on the power play for the Golden Knights in the same period. Tomas Hertl put Vegas ahead, but Olen Zellweger equalized for Anaheim with just more than three minutes remaining in regulation to force overtime.
That set up another turning point for Dorofeyev, who scored the game-winning goal in overtime and gave Vegas the 3-2 lead. The Ducks had been even with the Golden Knights through four games, but the overtime loss handed Vegas the advantage and pushed Anaheim into a must-response position with the series now turning on the next result.
What Tuesday made plain is that the nhl playoff bracket is starting to narrow in a hurry. One night produced two one-goal wins, two teams one step from control, and no margin left for a stumble. The next game for Buffalo now carries the weight of a series that has already changed shape once, and Vegas has put itself in front with one more chance to finish the job.
