Caufield's 14th Overtime Goal Sets a Franchise Record and Beats Buffalo Again

Cole Caufield scored twice at the Bell Centre on Saturday night, and his second goal, an unassisted breakaway 54 seconds into overtime, gave Montreal a 4-3 win over Buffalo. It was the 14th regular-season overtime goal of his career, which extends the franchise record he already held, The Canadian Press reports via TSN. Buffalo had a 3-on-1 to win the game seconds earlier and missed the net, and nine seconds was all the time between that miss and the record.

How did the overtime actually unfold?

In about nine seconds, and in the wrong order for Buffalo. Montreal won the opening faceoff of overtime and Lane Hutson put a shot on net inside ten seconds. Buffalo then broke out on a 3-on-1, the best look either team got in the extra period, and Josh Norris missed the net at 0:45. The puck came back out, Caufield collected it in the neutral zone and went in alone on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, scoring into the top-left corner at 0:54, HabsHQ’s postgame report records.

Martin St-Louis laughed about the sequence afterward. “We’re happy with the result. But you watch the play and they had a three-on-one. I’m thinking, this isn’t serious, and then they miss the net,” he said, in quotes the same report carried. His goaltender had a simpler version. Jacob Fowler, who has faced Caufield in practice, said that when Caufield comes in like that the odds are high in his favour, “and even more on a Saturday night in overtime.”

What record did the goal set?

A franchise one, and it was already his. The goal was Caufield’s 14th regular-season overtime goal, extending the Canadiens record, the Canadian Press reports. HabsHQ’s report adds the two comparisons that give the number its weight. Fourteen ties Kirill Kaprizov and Sebastian Aho for the most overtime goals in the league since Caufield debuted in 2020-21. It also ties Connor McDavid, who has 14, for the most overtime goals by a player aged 25 or younger. Those are that report’s figures, and this article credits them that way rather than presenting them as a league release. The wider list he is climbing sits in the site’s look at the most goals in NHL history, where overtime winners are a small line in much larger totals.

His 36 career game-winning goals, again per HabsHQ, tie Bernie Geoffrion for second among Canadiens players aged 25 or younger, behind Guy Lafleur’s 45. Montreal has played eight games this season and Caufield has five goals. The site’s guide to overtime rules in the NHL sets out why the 3-on-3 format produces so many of these one-rush finishes: with that much open ice, a missed chance at one end is often a breakaway at the other, which is a fair summary of Saturday’s last nine seconds.

Why does Caufield keep scoring against Buffalo?

The numbers have stopped looking like a coincidence. The Canadiens’ own recap on NHL.com notes he has scored 11 goals in his last 10 games against the Sabres. His captain is on a similar run in the fixture: Nick Suzuki’s assist on Zachary Bolduc’s power-play goal extended his point streak against Buffalo to 10 games, a streak the Canadian Press also lists as the game’s key stat.

Then there is the day of the week. The Canadiens’ recap calls Caufield “Mr. Saturday Night”, and HabsHQ priced the nickname: his two goals on Saturday took him to 66 career goals on Saturdays in 106 games, 0.62 per game. Among players with at least 50 Saturday goals since 1943-44, that rate ties Pavel Bure and trails only Mike Bossy, Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Cam Neely and Brett Hull. A reader checking those names against the site’s ranking of the greatest NHL players will notice the list is not casual company. Caufield’s first goal on Saturday, at 14:01 of the first period, was set up by Juraj Slafkovsky and Alexandre Carrier and put Montreal ahead 2-1, two minutes after Bolduc had tied the game. Montreal’s earlier extra-time win this month, when the club had three goals disallowed before winning a shootout, had Bolduc in the middle of it too.

How did Buffalo come back, and what did Thompson’s goal mean?

Buffalo’s night had two parts. Norris opened the scoring at 8:21 of the first period, on a rebound after a Montreal turnover, and Montreal led 3-1 by the middle of the second after Alexandre Texier scored his first goal of the season. Jack Quinn started the comeback at 9:52 of the second with a shorthanded goal, his first career shorthanded goal, his fifth of the season and his third in two games, the Sabres’ recap on NHL.com records. Quinn had a four-point game in Buffalo’s comeback win over Toronto on Thursday.

Tage Thompson tied it at 10:12 of the third, alone at the side of the net on a Josh Doan pass. The goal was the 218th of his career with Buffalo, which moved him past Jason Pominville into sole possession of 10th place in franchise history. Rene Robert, on 222, is next. Buffalo’s recap notes the Sabres have now come back from two goals down in three straight games, and five times this season, and that the team took six of eight points from its week of Atlantic Division games despite losing twice to Montreal in extra time, Tuesday in a shootout and Saturday in overtime. Luukkonen made 30 saves. Fowler made 23 for Montreal in his fourth start in five games. The single-point pace of Thompson’s climb belongs on the same page as the site’s table of the most points in NHL history only in spirit; 218 goals for one club, at 28, is a franchise argument, and Saturday added to it in a losing cause.

Should Montreal be worried about the leads?

St-Louis did not hide from the pattern. Asked about giving up a two-goal lead to the same team twice in five days, he said the team is playing good games and making small mental mistakes that hurt it, and that “when you lead by two, it should be over”, in the HabsHQ report. Montreal also needed its penalty kill to survive the end of regulation to reach overtime at all: Slafkovsky tripped Jiri Kulich with 2:17 left, Buffalo spent most of the power play in Montreal’s zone, and the kill held, which the Canadian Press lists as the game’s key moment alongside the winner.

The counterweight is that Montreal keeps winning the extra period anyway, and has a player whose overtime record is now a franchise mark. Both things can be true in October. The test of the lead problem is the schedule: Montreal hosts San Jose on Tuesday, and Buffalo hosts Philadelphia on Wednesday, so each side gets a new opponent before they meet again.