LATE SABRES GOAL SINKS HABS

Montreal blows three leads to lose 4-3

After Thursday’s morning skate at the KeyBank Center, Canadiens coach Claude Julien was asked about his team’s new fast-paced, aggressive style of play and how it might be a problem to keep it up through a full 82-game season.

“It’s a long year and when you play at that pace, there’s going to be a time where it’s going to catch up, we’re going to look a little tired,” Julien said. “So it’s up to me to manage the rest, the length of practices, that kind of stuff so that we can try and sustain that as long as we can.”

They couldn’t sustain it Thursday night in Buffalo, losing 4-3 to the Sabres when Kyle Okposo scored the winner on a power play with 1:01 left on the clock and Joel Armia in the penalty box for tripping. The Sabres outshot the Canadiens 42-22.

The Canadiens’ record fell to 5-2-2 through nine games. Last season, the Canadiens had a 2-6-1 record after nine games en route to finishing 28th in the overall NHL standings.

Max Domi scored twice Thursday night for the Canadiens and Armia added a single. Jason Pominville scored twice for the Sabres and Sam Reinhart also scored. Antti Niemi was in goal for the Canadiens, giving Carey Price a night off, and saw his record fall to 2-1-0.

The Canadiens’ new fast-paced style was on display just over a minute into the game, when Artturi Lehkonen knocked the puck away from Sabres defenceman Marco Scandella at the blue-line on an aggressive forecheck and then Domi outskated Jeff Skinner to the loose puck along the right-wing boards before cutting to the middle of the high slot and firing a wrist shot over the glove hand of goalie Carter Hutton at the 1:17 mark.

The Canadiens’ second goal at 16:08 of the second period came after rookie Jesperi Kotkaniemi was very aggressive on the forecheck to negate an icing call, creating a loose puck that Armia picked up and then scored on a wraparound from behind the net.

Domi scored his second goal at 6:34 of the third period when he picked up a loose puck at the Sabres’ blue-line, skated in between two defencemen and fired a low shot to the stick side from the high slot that beat Hutton and gave the Canadiens a 3-2 lead. Reinhart then tied it at the 13:07 mark, setting the stage for Okposo’s winner.

“This is the first year that we’ve really pushed on that kind of a game for our team and until you show you can do it throughout a whole year you got to kind of challenge yourself and I don’t want to stand here right now and say you’re going to see this all year,” Julien said after the morning skate about his new system. "It’s unknown for me, too. It’s up to us to, as I said at the beginning of the year: Say less, do more.

"Let’s just show them that we can sustain it and go from there.”

It didn’t go well Thursday night.