Canadiens put on show in front of raucous Bell Centre in Game 3

MONTREAL -- So please define, in a word or two, what it was that we just saw?

“Crazy,” said Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson. “Just insane.”

“Crazy,” agreed Canadiens forward Juraj Slafkovsky.

“Probably emotional,” captain Nick Suzuki said.

“Energetic,” forward Cole Caufield said with just a hint of a grin.

Adjectives took as heavy a beating as the scoreboard on Friday night at a rocking Bell Centre, where the Canadiens slugged out a wild, sometimes bizarre 6-3 win against the Washington Capitals in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference First Round.

The Capitals lead the best-of-7 series 2-1 entering Game 4 here on Sunday (6:30 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TBS, truTV, MNMT, MAX).

No matter what you came to see or tuned in to watch on Friday, you got a taste of everything.

A wild, playoff-starved crowd singing their lungs out at the first sold-out playoff game here at Bell Centre since 2017. Check.

Two goalies who have been a large part of the series, Montreal’s Sam Montembeault and Washington’s Logan Thompson, both injured and replaced by their backups. Check.

A Montreal policeman suiting up as the home team’s emergency backup. Why not?

Two players with the opposite of a bench-clearing brawl, instead rumbling into the Capitals' bench before an official finally dove atop them to restore order. It had that, too.

The Canadiens’ first line of Suzuki, Caufield and Slafkovsky had a combined 19 shots, one fewer than half of the total Montreal fired at Thompson and, in third-period relief, Charlie Lindgren.

Indeed, Caufield’s eyes widened when he looked at the game summary, seeing 11 shots on goal beside his name.

But let’s start with the unofficial 90 decibels that the crowd generated -- for warmups. That’s nearing rock concert levels. Crank it up to almost 120 decibels, the punishing equivalent of a jet’s takeoff, when Canadiens defenseman Alexandre Carrier tied the game 1-1 with 53 seconds left in the first period.

The Canadiens then held a 3-2 lead at the end of the second period, with Caufield scoring his second goal of the series at 19:51 off an exquisite pass from Hutson.

“It was pretty open,” Hutson said of his passing lane. “I got a lucky bounce. Cole always has a nose for the net, and he was in a perfect spot.”

Suzuki, who scored his team’s second goal, liked the effort across the board that provided the Canadiens with a victory in what was pretty much a must-win game.

“We put ourselves in a good spot,” Suzuki said of taking the lead into the second intermission. “We came into the room and reset. We gave up an early one in the third (Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin scored his third of the series to tie it 3-3 at 2:39) but stuck with it. We didn’t get too high or too low. We maintained the same pressure we brought in the first two periods. We really needed that win.”

Slafkovsky had a goal and five shots, second-most to Caufield’s 11, and was still shaking his head after the game about what he’d just lived.

“I’ve never experienced something like that,” he said. “Today the crowd was amazing. I hope we can bring more and more playoff games to this building and win some games.

“We knew it was going to be physical. We also knew we just had to control our emotions through 60 minutes. Sometimes it’s hard, we have guys who want to fight -- I don’t want to say something bad -- so we just had to control our emotions and focus on our game.”

Slafkovsky was chuckling about the rumble at the end of the second period that saw Canadiens forward Josh Anderson and Capitals forward Tom Wilson wrestle with great vigor on Washington’s bench before finally being tackled on the floor between the bench and boards by an official.

“That was something crazy,” he said. “I kind of wish I was on the ice. I was sitting at the far end of our bench, and I felt it would be bad if I jumped in there. It was ... nuts.”

Anderson dismissed the rumble as “it’s the playoffs, it’s going to be intense. Two guys trying to defend their teammates, and obviously it escalated. You’ll do anything for your team out there.

“It’s a lot of emotions. We’ve been waiting a long time for this, our fan base and the players. It’s been a few tough years (the Canadiens had not qualified for the playoffs since 2021). I can’t tell you how excited we were to play in front of our home crowd tonight. The buzz around the city, all the jerseys ... the atmosphere was unbelievable. We knew they were going to be a hard team to play against. It was a must-win for us to build some momentum in the series. We had everybody going tonight, we didn’t have any passengers.”

Across the dressing room, having just experienced their first postseason action on home ice, Hutson and backup goalie Jakub Dobes were trying to digest a night that shook Bell Centre to its foundation.

Dobes watched it from the end of the Canadiens' bench until he was pressed into emergency relief of Montembeault at 11:39 of the second period.

“Watching from the bench, it was definitely intense,” he said. “But once I was on the ice, there’s a lot of pressure. A goalie can’t hide. I didn’t pay attention to anything but the puck, not the fights, the crowd or the scrums. I just focused on myself.

“You can’t picture this in your head. I don’t think there’s anything like it. It’s pretty cool."

Hutson said he was amazed by the electricity in the arena before he’d even stepped onto the ice for warmups.

“Before the game had even started, we couldn’t hear anything,” he said. “It was pretty surreal. I’d never been in a setting like that. We’ve had some really loud moments throughout the season, but before the puck even dropped you felt like you could do anything with that energy.”

The Canadiens indeed did many things to the delight of their fans. They’ll try to do more of the same on Sunday, the complexion of this series having changed with 60 minutes of Game 3 hockey that had everything, and more.