As Capitals and Canadiens lose their starting goalies, chaos enters the chat

New York Times

26-04-2025

MONTREAL — The arc of a Stanley Cup playoff series is long, and maintaining perspective through dips and swerves and off-road moments is crucial. That applies to all the stakeholders, really. Coaches, players, fans, mascots, dorks in the press box — take your pick.
And thus, there were moments on Friday night, in the aftermath of the Montreal Canadiens' 6-3 win over the Washington Capitals, when that concept felt like a shifting target. There were moments, plainly, when it felt like too much stuff had happened. Playoff hockey had returned to one of the cathedrals of the sport. An official and a coach almost got absorbed into a quasi-line brawl. The team that won Games 1 and 2 crashed out, throwing the power dynamics of the series as we knew them into flux.
Advertisement
All of that is worth discussing. All of that will carry some sort of consequence. None of it, though, is more important than one simple fact: both teams lost their starting goaltenders. That — more than Tom Wilson's instant induction into the reaction .GIF hall of fame, even more than Lane Hutson's true arrival as a playoff performer — makes this series chaotic. It makes it unknowable. It could make it remarkable.
We'll know at least a bit more about the respective situations of Montreal's Sam Montembeault and Washington's Logan Thompson on Saturday. As it stands, here's what we've got: At the first TV timeout of the second period, Montembeault went to the bench and appeared to say something to the Canadiens' training staff. At the next TV timeout, after Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki had scored on the power play to give Montreal a 2-1 lead and Washington's Jakob Chychrun replied to tie it, Montembeault went to the bench, whispered something to backup Jakub Dobeš as he walked by him and headed to the dressing room. That was it for the Canadiens' starting goaltender.
Asked postgame about Montembeault, Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis deflected. 'I don't have time to deal with that,' was the French-to-English translation.
It's tough to overstate Montembeault's importance to the Canadiens. It's certainly more than his .902 save percentage — good but not great — suggests. In the regular season, he saved nearly 30 goals above expected. The goalies with more were Connor Hellebuyck, a runaway Vezina winner and the consensus pick as the best goalie on the planet; Anthony Stolarz, who just had the best goaltending season by a Maple Leaf since the 1960s; and Igor Shesterkin, the Rangers' $92 million workhorse who beat Montembeault by percentage points. That is the entire list.
Montreal's 0-2 start to the series had exactly nothing to do with him. If he'd been a little less outstanding during the regular season, they wouldn't be here at all. Now, he might be turning things over to Dobeš, who was solid in his first 16 NHL games (.908 save percentage, 8.0 GSAx) but isn't much more than a mystery box.
Advertisement
(He also might be a great quote. 'You guys cannot imagine how a person feels,' the 23-year-old told reporters after the game. 'I was afraid, I was excited, I was emotional. I was crying at the end. I was a mess.' Feel better, Montreal fans. Your new goalie seems like a sweetheart.)
The optics on Thompson's injury are much, much worse. With 6:37 remaining in the game, as Canadiens winger Juraj Slafkovský scored to give Montreal a 5-3 lead, Capitals center Dylan Strome, who was in an all-out sprint trying to catch Slafkovský, steamrolled Thompson in the crease. His stick hit Thompson in the neck, both players hit the ice and Thompson broke Strome's fall, his leg appearing to bend awkwardly in the process. He stayed down for several seconds and needed help making it off the ice; he did not seem to be putting any weight on his left leg.
Logan Thompson leaves the game in pain following the Canadiens fifth goal of the night pic.twitter.com/Qi6GvoJkLl
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2025
'It's a crappy, crappy play,' defenseman John Carlson said.
Indeed. Capitals coach Spencer Carbery didn't have a postgame update on Thompson, either. Whenever it comes, it's hard to imagine it being positive.
If Montembeault's injury is consequential to the Canadiens, Thompson's is consequential to the league at large; he'd spent the first two games of the series — his first back in the lineup after missing Washington's last seven games with an upper-body injury — reminding us just what the Capitals are capable of when they're getting elite goaltending. When he was at his best, they locked down the Eastern Conference's top seed. As his play dipped, theirs did, too. And when he was out of the lineup, and the Caps got abysmal goaltending in his stead, people started asking questions.
His backup, Charlie Lindgren, deserves the equity he has with his teammates. For all intents and purposes, he dragged them to the playoffs last year. However, in his final 14 games this spring, many of which came with Thompson on the shelf, he put up an .884 save percentage and allowed nearly two goals above expected. Neither of those is going to work.
Advertisement
If it were only Montembeault who left Friday's game with a limp, you could've rubber-stamped Washington into the second round. If it were only Thompson, a potential Game 7 would loom off in the distance. Instead, both are gone — for a while, perhaps. Their teams are waiting to see what their absences will mean, and the rest of us are, too.
(Photo of Logan Thompson being helped off the ice in Game 3: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)