WASHINGTON — For the second straight game, the Montreal Canadiens mounted a third-period push on the Eastern Conference’s top seed. For the second straight game, it wasn’t enough.

The Washington Capitals on Wednesday defeated Montreal 3-1 in Game 2 of their Stanley Cup playoff series. This time, though, it wasn’t Alex Ovechkin bailing them out with an overtime goal. Goalie Logan Thompson, in his second game back after an upper-body injury that cost him the last seven of the regular season, sparkled down the stretch. Thompson made 14 saves in the third period and 25 overall, looking very much like the player who earned a $35.1 million contract extension.

“I always had a belief in myself and just needed a team to take a chance on me and I’m really thankful that Washington did,” Thompson said before the game, “and like I said, I’m not gonna take it for granted. I’m going to keep working hard and pushing myself to be better every day.”

On Wednesday, he was more than good enough.

Strome’s fortunate bounce

Dylan Strome’s offensive instincts are impressive, and in the second period, he used them to help put Washington back in the driver’s seat. One minute after Connor McMichael’s goal tied the score 1-1, Strome scored, shooting the puck off Canadiens goalie Sam Montembeault’s pads and unintentionally creating his own rebound. The net was open, and that was that.

the Caps made this puck movement look easy — it’s Leonard to Beauvillier to Strome pic.twitter.com/3ZERNO9otd

— Shayna (@shaynagoldman_) April 24, 2025

“Sometimes you can catch a goalie by surprise,” Strome said after the game. “I felt like it was a pretty hard pass. I just got lucky it came right back to my stick. (Montembeault is) a big goalie. He gets that pretty quickly. I was trying to put the first one in and it didn’t go in. A pretty lucky play, it goes right back to me. That was a great play by (Ovechkin) to change for Ryan (Leonard) and kind of do it quick up there. That was a great play by those guys.”

Strome’s backhand was the capper to a slick offensive sequence by the Capitals. Montreal, after having Patrik Laine stuck on the ice for a defensive zone faceoff, failed to get the puck deep enough into the zone for a full change. The Capitals’ John Carlson retrieved the puck and sent it past a changing Laine to Leonard at the blue line. Leonard gained the zone and found Anthony Beauvillier for a one-time pass to Strome alone in the slot. Beauvillier and Strome, typically with Ovechkin as their left wing, have been highly effective and highly productive across both games — and that’s after only getting about 24 minutes together in the regular season.

“(Beauvillier is) smart,” Strome said before Game 2. “He knows how to score. He doesn’t give up offense for defense, which helps (Ovechkin) and I a lot.”

A momentum-shifting fall

Canadiens defenseman David Savard is playing his final NHL season. He is an inspirational leader for the team. He has mentored most of the team’s young defense corps as each player entered the NHL.

But Savard has been used sparingly at five-on-five over the second half of the season, and shortly after the Canadiens took their first lead of the series on Christian Dvorak’s second-period goal, Savard fell.

The Canadiens had a two-on-two situation behind their net with Savard defending against McMichael. When Savard tumbled, McMichael was left alone with the puck and no one checking him. He worked his way around the Canadiens’ net, came out the other side and took a shot that Montembeault turned aside. When the rebound went right back to McMichael, he attempted a pass through the slot just as Savard was making his way back into the play, and the puck caromed off him and behind Montembeault to tie the score for the Capitals at 3:47 of the second period.

Strome scored his go-ahead goal one minute later.

Savard sat on the Canadiens bench for close to 10 minutes of game time after the McMichael goal and got only 48 seconds more of ice time in the second period. He played a more or less regular shift in the third, but the damage was done.

Hockey is a game of mistakes, and Savard wasn’t the only one on the Canadiens to make one in this game. But not all mistakes are created equal. This one was costly.

Martin St. Louis shuffles his lines

The Canadiens’ line of Alex Newhook, Laine and rookie Ivan Demidov was completely buried by the Capitals in Game 1. Demidov was seen as a potential X-factor for the Canadiens entering the series, the No. 5 pick in the 2024 draft unexpectedly being released from his KHL contract early enough to join the Canadiens for the final two games of the regular season.

But Demidov can’t be an X-factor if his line never has the puck, and that was the case in Game 1.

So, for Game 2, St. Louis moved Demidov to right wing on a line with Emil Heineman and Jake Evans, and shifted Joel Armia to replace Demidov on the Newhook line.

The change ultimately did not move the needle for the Canadiens, as neither the Evans nor the Newhook lines was all that effective, as has been the case for weeks. Nick Suzuki’s line generated some chances, and Dvorak’s line was strong in possession, but the other two lines were so ineffective that St. Louis cobbled together a line of Evans, Newhook and Demidov for the third period. The new line had some moments, but nothing substantial.

For the Canadiens to have any chance of winning a game, let alone the series, they will need to be more than a two-line team.

Right now, that is what they are.

Alexeyev all smiles

Capitals defenseman Alex Alexeyev already had a pretty tough job. After playing in just eight regular-season games, he was in the Game 1 lineup, replacing the injured Martin Fehérváry. He acquitted himself well — and also took a stick to the face, losing three teeth and chipping three more in the process. He was in the dentist’s chair until about 2:30 on Tuesday morning.

Two bits of good news came out of the ordeal: The ice crew at Capital One Arena found two of the teeth and returned them to their rightful owner, and Alexeyev on Wednesday had another strong night on the Caps’ third pair. With him on the ice, in a full bubble face guard, Washington led the Canadiens 11-8 in shots on goal, 18-15 in shot attempts and 1-0 in goals. If they keep getting that sort of play from the bottom of their lineup, they’re going to be tough to beat.

Another minor shift from St. Louis

Capitals coach Spencer Carbery has been talking since before Game 1 about how dangerous the Suzuki line becomes when deployed with rookie defenceman Lane Hutson behind them.

When St. Louis created the new line with Newhook, Evans and Demidov, however, he started deploying Hutson with them in the third period a bit more often than with Suzuki.

Overall in the game, Suzuki played much more often with Hutson than he did with Mike Matheson and Alexandre Carrier behind him, but his on-ice numbers suffered greatly when he didn’t have Hutson with him.

The logic from St. Louis here seems sound – try to get more from another line by using Hutson away from Suzuki. But the best way for the Canadiens to create offense is through that combination of Suzuki and Hutson. It’s a bit of a dilemma, and another indication that getting more out of what he has on his roster is a significant challenge for St. Louis.

(Photo of Connor McMichael: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)