Dahlin Is Out — Power Faces Buffalo's Biggest Test Against Montreal
GOATIFYBuffalo finally found a performance it could build on against Florida. Less than a day later, the Sabres have to find out whether that progress survives without the player who normally drives their defense. Captain Rasmus Dahlin will miss Tuesday's visit to Montreal after an upper-body injury ended his night early in Monday's 5–3 win over the Panthers. The club calls him day to day, but he did not travel with the team.
That turns a familiar Atlantic Division matchup into a revealing test of Buffalo's depth. Owen Power is already handling an enormous workload. Tage Thompson is firing shots at a league-leading rate. The power play has finally begun to produce. Across the ice, Montreal is dealing with injuries of its own and turning again to young goaltender Jacob Fowler. The Sabres and Canadiens needed seven games to settle their playoff series last spring; their first meeting since then comes with both lineups under strain and little time to adjust.
Without Dahlin, Owen Power Has to Become the Sabres' First Answer
The timing is cruel for Buffalo. Dahlin had scored on the power play in the first period against Florida before leaving early in the second after a shot attempt. The Sabres held on, then pulled away in the third, but winning one game after losing a top defenseman is different from designing an entire game plan without him. Dahlin normally takes the difficult minutes, pushes the puck out of trouble and supplies a dangerous shooting option when opponents take penalties. His absence is not simply one vacant place in the lineup.
Power becomes the obvious pressure point. Through Buffalo's first six games he averaged 26 minutes and seven seconds of ice time, the seventh-highest figure in the league entering Tuesday. Adding several more shifts to that workload would be easy on a lineup card and much harder in practice. Every extra offensive-zone start, penalty-killing sequence or long defensive shift carries a cost. Montreal can test him by forcing repeated retrievals and making Buffalo's defensemen turn under forechecking pressure rather than allowing clean, first-touch breakouts.
Power has also been producing. He supplied two assists in the win over Florida, while Olen Zellweger played a season-high 20:03 and put six shots on goal. Those contributions give coach Lindy Ruff options beyond simply asking one player to impersonate Dahlin. A more sustainable approach is to spread the puck-moving burden: Power takes the most demanding matchups, Zellweger gets opportunities to attack, and the remaining pairs focus on getting the first pass right. Defenseman Dennis Gilbert, recalled from Rochester on Tuesday morning, is in line for his season debut, adding another decision about deployment and matchups.
There is an important distinction between replacing Dahlin's minutes and replacing his decisions. Buffalo can cover the former with a rotation. The latter requires five skaters reading the same play. Against Montreal's speed, that means earlier support from the forwards, cleaner exits through the middle and fewer situations in which a defenseman must beat two forecheckers alone. Power does not need to dominate every shift. He needs to keep the game organized while his captain is unavailable.
Buffalo's Power Play Is Heating Up — Tage Thompson Must Keep It That Way
Buffalo's clearest positive from Monday was not merely the final score. The Sabres had started the season without a power-play goal in 13 opportunities, then went 3-for-9 across their next two games. Noah Östlund's third-period power-play winner against Florida was the decisive moment of a game in which the Panthers repeatedly answered Buffalo's leads. That swing matters because a team missing its top offensive defenseman cannot afford to waste the extra possessions that penalties provide.
Dahlin's injury changes the shape of that advantage. His shot forces penalty killers to respect the point, and his ability to change the angle of a pass opens seams for teammates. With him unavailable, Buffalo must avoid turning every possession into a static perimeter exchange. Power and the other defensemen can move the puck, but the forwards have to do more of the deception: rotate through the high slot, pull defenders toward one side and create a real threat near the crease. A successful adjustment would make the power play harder to predict, not just less reliant on its captain.
Thompson is the obvious centerpiece. He entered Tuesday with 30 shots on goal, more than anyone else in the NHL. Shot volume by itself is not a guarantee of scoring, but it does reveal how consistently Buffalo can get its most dangerous finisher involved. Against Florida, the line of Thompson, Peyton Krebs and Josh Doan outscored its opponents 2–0 at five-on-five and controlled 78 percent of the expected goals while on the ice, according to the game's tracking data. Those are one-game numbers, not a permanent verdict, yet they show the kind of territorial pressure Buffalo wants to repeat.
The challenge is to preserve that attacking identity without sacrificing defensive coverage. Montreal will have chances to counter if Buffalo's forwards cheat for offense while the defense is short-handed. The smarter version of the Sabres keeps Thompson receiving pucks in dangerous areas, asks Krebs and Doan to win the next battle after a missed shot, and trusts its depth to create second opportunities. Buffalo's best stretch against Florida came from sustained pressure, not isolated highlight plays. That is a model that can travel, even if the lineup cannot remain intact.
Montreal Has Its Own Injury Problems — and a Goalie With Momentum
Montreal is not waiting at full strength. Forward Ivan Demidov, who recorded six points in last spring's playoff series against Buffalo, is sidelined for several weeks with a lower-body injury. Defenseman Mike Matheson is also out. The Canadiens therefore face a version of Buffalo's problem: their most reliable combinations are being disturbed just as the schedule demands quick decisions. For both teams, the game may be decided as much by which replacements settle into their assignments as by which stars produce a spectacular moment.
Montreal does have one encouraging development in net. Jacob Fowler is set to make his third consecutive start after a 1–0 shootout victory over Detroit on Saturday. He had stopped 45 of 48 shots over his first two decisions, a .938 save percentage, entering the Sabres game. That is a small sample, but it offers the Canadiens something valuable: a goaltender whose recent work gives the skaters in front of him permission to play with patience. Jakub Dobes, who featured in the playoffs, has had a difficult opening stretch with a .856 save percentage and 4.43 goals-against average across three starts.
Fowler's form also raises a tactical question for Buffalo. Thompson and company can generate plenty of attempts, but they need traffic, rebounds and movement across the slot rather than a long series of unscreened shots. The Canadiens have not been efficient on the power play either, converting only once in 17 opportunities through five games. That should make the battle at even strength and the first goal especially important. A team with an injured defense can lose control quickly if it spends the entire evening defending a lead that belongs to its opponent.
Buffalo also has uncertainty in goal. Colten Ellis started against Florida but was replaced before the game's midpoint; Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen came on and made 13 saves in the win. Ruff's choice for Montreal was not settled in the early preview, so there is no reason to treat either option as confirmed until the lineup is announced. What is clear is the turnaround: Buffalo is playing the second game of a back-to-back, while Montreal has had more rest. Last season's Sabres went 9–1–3 in second games of back-to-backs, an encouraging precedent but no substitute for fresh legs.
Tuesday also reopens a rivalry that required seven playoff games to separate the clubs last season. They meet again in Montreal on Saturday, with Buffalo visiting Toronto in between. That creates a compact stretch of divisional hockey in which every adjustment can be revisited within days. The result of this first meeting will matter, but the more revealing question is whether Buffalo can establish a repeatable structure while Dahlin recovers and whether Montreal can exploit the gaps without exposing its own.
Buffalo's 5–3 win over Florida was a step forward, not a guarantee. Without Dahlin, the Sabres need Power's heavy minutes to remain effective, Thompson's line to keep creating chances and the power play to prove its recent improvement was more than a two-game spike. Montreal has vulnerabilities of its own, but Fowler's early form and the extra rest make this a demanding first stop on the road trip.
The safest forecast is not that one star will decide everything. It is that the team which manages its weakened defense better, avoids careless special-teams mistakes and supports its goalie will own the most important possessions. Buffalo found its rhythm on Monday. Tuesday will show whether it can hold that rhythm when its captain is watching from home.
