Montreal Scored Five Straight. Fowler Made Boston's Comeback Impossible.
GOATIFYFor one night in Boston, the Montreal Canadiens made a rivalry game look startlingly one-sided. Five unanswered goals, from the opening minutes through the middle of the second period, carried Montreal to a 5-2 win over the Bruins on Thursday, November 12. What began as a fast start became something more convincing: a road performance in which the Canadiens capitalized on almost every major Boston lapse without allowing the home team a realistic route back.
Kirby Dach and Josh Anderson opened the scoring, Jake Evans and Cole Caufield widened the gap, and Phillip Danault made it five before Boston could respond. Jacob Fowler finished with 30 saves, providing the other half of a result that stretched Montreal's point streak to 12 games. Those numbers matter because this was not a soft opponent or an empty early-season fixture. Boston arrived with momentum, and both clubs had reasons to view the Atlantic Division standings as increasingly meaningful.
The 5-2 score tells the story of the night, but not all of it. Montreal's forwards repeatedly made Boston pay for space in dangerous areas. Fowler dealt with enough pressure to keep the result from turning uncomfortable. And Boston's midgame goaltending change raised a broader question about a team that had been winning games but could not slow a confident divisional rival.
Five goals in 34 minutes exposed Boston's defensive gaps
Montreal did not ease into the game. At 2:34 of the first period, Kirby Dach supplied the opening goal, putting Boston behind before the home side could impose its usual pace. Josh Anderson doubled the advantage just over six minutes later. By the time the first intermission arrived, the Bruins had a problem larger than a two-goal deficit: the Canadiens were finding ways to attack quickly, and Boston's defensive responses were arriving a step late.
That distinction matters. A team can recover from an unlucky opening bounce or a single mistake. Recovering becomes much harder when the same opponent repeatedly finds space through different routes. Montreal's first-period goals rewarded direct, decisive play, but they also created the conditions for a dangerous second period. Boston needed to chase the game. The Canadiens had an opportunity to use the extra urgency against them.
Jake Evans made that opportunity count at 4:24 of the second. Anderson, already on the scoresheet, delivered the pass that sent Evans through for a finish that pushed the lead to three. It was a revealing sequence because it showed how quickly Montreal could turn possession and positioning into a clear scoring look. The goal also changed the calculation for Boston: a comeback now required more than a single good shift, and any additional mistake threatened to make the night unrecoverable.
Four minutes later, Cole Caufield struck. His goal at 8:14 put Montreal up 4-0 and ended Jeremy Swayman's night. A forward group that could draw attention to one dangerous finisher was now getting meaningful production from several. Dach had started the scoring, Anderson was involved twice, Evans had added the third, and Caufield had applied the next blow. This was a collective offensive surge rather than a one-player highlight performance.
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Phillip Danault finished the five-goal run at 14:15 of the second period. By then Michael DiPietro had entered in relief for Boston, but the change in net could not reverse the opportunities that had already been conceded. Danault's goal showed that Montreal was still able to generate offense after the game's first major adjustment, a further indication that the problems extended beyond one individual goaltender's performance.
The sequence also tells us something about how Montreal managed its advantage. The Canadiens did not need to spend the entire evening attacking recklessly or relying on one offensive line. Getting a lead from multiple contributors gave the club room to take smarter risks later. Its scorers could still press when openings appeared, while the team had a margin for errors that Boston did not enjoy.
Casey Mittelstadt finally put the Bruins on the board at 14:53 of the second, less than a minute after Danault's goal. That quick reply prevented a shutout, but it came after the most consequential portion of the contest had already passed. Five Montreal goals in less than 35 minutes had changed the scoreboard, the goaltending matchup and the way both benches approached the rest of the game. The real story of the surge was not simply its speed; it was Boston's inability to interrupt it.
Fowler's 30 saves gave the lead its real foundation
Five goals are the obvious headline, but Jacob Fowler's evening should not be reduced to watching his teammates build a lead. The Montreal goaltender finished with 30 saves, and his workload demonstrated that Boston still created enough offense to demand attention. Even when a game appears settled early, a series of clean chances can give a trailing team a route back. Fowler denied the Bruins the kind of momentum they desperately needed.
There is a difference between having a five-goal cushion and protecting one. A goalkeeper can lose rhythm during long stretches of play at the other end, particularly when the opponent begins to take chances and funnel pucks toward the crease. Fowler instead stayed involved through Boston's attempts to rescue the night. The two goals he conceded did not change the result because the Canadiens continued to get the stops that mattered around them.
His recent form makes the performance more interesting than the box score alone. Fowler entered the season as a young goaltender trying to establish NHL consistency, and his work had already earned him recognition as the league's rookie of the month for October. Since an early-season defeat on October 8, his run of results had become a major ingredient in Montreal's larger points streak. The Boston game was another example of that combination of composure and support working together.
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Fowler also reached a notable road benchmark. His five consecutive road victories to open a season matched a franchise mark associated with Charlie Hodge. Any record from a different era requires context rather than direct claims about individual greatness, but a young goalie reaching a club-history milestone says something about the trust Montreal can place in him outside its home building. Road starts in the Atlantic Division rarely provide ideal conditions for an inexperienced player.
It helps, of course, that the Canadiens did not leave their goalie entirely on his own. Mike Matheson returned to the lineup after missing six games with a lower-body issue and immediately supplied another experienced presence. He contributed an assist on Anderson's goal, finished with a plus-three rating and played more than 21 minutes. His return mattered less as a dramatic comeback narrative than as a practical boost to a defense that needed to manage Boston's eventual push.
Montreal's offense gave Fowler space to operate without every save feeling decisive, while his reliability prevented the score from tightening enough to shake the bench. That is the relationship contenders want between a productive attack and a dependable goalie. One group can absorb the other's occasional lapse. An offense that scores five does not need a perfect shutout, and a goaltender making 30 saves should not need to produce a miracle to win.
The Canadiens' 12-game point streak is a more useful measuring stick than any isolated star turn. A streak of that length survives different opponents, game states and individual performances. On this night the attacking unit did most of its damage early, Fowler and the defense handled the periods when Boston had possession, and the final margin reflected contributions at both ends. That blend is what Montreal will need when it inevitably encounters a tighter game with far fewer scoring chances.
Boston's goalie change was the symptom, not the cause
Jeremy Swayman left the Boston net after the fourth Montreal goal, with four goals conceded on 17 shots. The decision was understandable given the score and the need to change the game's energy, but it should not obscure the quality of the chances the Bruins had allowed. Changing a goalie may stop a spiral or wake up a team. It does not, by itself, repair slow defensive coverage, poor transition decisions or opponents getting loose at the wrong moments.
Michael DiPietro came on in relief and finished with 13 saves. Danault still scored Montreal's fifth goal before Boston could register its first, so the substitution did not produce an immediate defensive reset. Yet the Bruins were not completely passive for the remainder of the game. Casey Mittelstadt scored late in the second period and again just 52 seconds into the third, giving the home team at least a hint of momentum and making the final score look less overwhelming than the first 35 minutes had been.
Those two goals were a reminder that Boston has enough offensive talent to punish an opponent that loses its concentration. But a 5-2 result is not the same thing as a close comeback. When a club has already fallen five goals behind, it needs both repeated scoring and an almost complete end to chances at the other end. The Bruins could generate a response, not the sustained pressure required to turn the contest around.
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That is particularly frustrating because Boston entered the night playing strong hockey. Its four-game winning streak ended, as did a seven-game home winning run. For a team that had found ways to defend its building and protect leads, surrendering four goals before the midpoint of the second period was an unusually sharp reversal. The difficult review for Boston concerns what happened ahead of the crease as much as what happened in it.
Captain David Pastrnak and coach Marco Sturm both had reason to focus on the side's slow start and defensive execution afterward. The Bruins could point to their late scoring as evidence that they competed through the final horn, but the initial breakdowns had put them in a situation their own attack could not reasonably solve. The next test is whether the defensive habits from their winning run reappear quickly, especially against clubs that counterattack with Montreal's speed.
There was also an unresolved personnel concern for Montreal. Chris Kreider exited in the third period after contact with Boston's Michael Eyssimont, and there was no definitive postgame update in the immediate reporting. It would be premature to attach a diagnosis or a return timetable to that sequence. The Canadiens can acknowledge the emphatic victory while monitoring an injury question that could become important if their momentum carries into the next stretch.
The standings make the outcome feel substantial without making it decisive. Montreal rose to 28 points, level with Tampa Bay at the top of the Atlantic picture in the contemporaneous team account, while Boston remained close enough for the rivalry's next meeting to matter. The standings are still fluid in November, and one result cannot establish the final order. What this meeting did establish is that Montreal's fast attack and reliable goaltending can overwhelm a quality opponent, while Boston's apparent stability can disappear quickly when its defensive spacing fails.
Montreal's strongest argument for its place near the top of the Atlantic Division is not that it scored five times in Boston. It is that those goals arrived through several different players and situations while the goalie supplied a second layer of security. A fast attack may produce the highlight reel; responsible support and timely saves give a winning streak room to survive nights when the finishing disappears.
For Boston, there is little value in reducing this loss to a goaltending substitution. The early gaps, the chances conceded and the inability to stabilize after the first two goals are all parts of the same performance. Montreal can take a genuine divisional statement into its next game, while the Bruins must show that the structure behind their previous run of victories can return. One Thursday night does not decide the Atlantic race, but this one gave a revealing snapshot of how the two clubs are playing it.
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