Tage Thompson bearhugged Danault on the play that led to the goal, and many believe it should've been a penalty.
The puck still ended up in the net, but the goal was waved off. Some fans say the Canadiens got robbed, while others argue it should've simply been a two-minute minor.
In the end, hockey is a fast game, and the referee right there on the play called it no goal.
It's the kind of sequence that will be debated for a long time because there was contact, chaos around the crease, and very little time for the officials to process everything in real time.
Depending on which side you're on, it either looks like a missed penalty that erased a good goal or a correct whistle made before the puck crossed the line.
Either way, it became one of the biggest talking points of the game.
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That's the kind of call that swings a series. Buffalo and Montreal split the first two games at KeyBank Center before heading north.
Martin St-Louis runs a team built on structure, and Danault is the spine of his shutdown group. The 33-year-old veteran sits at plus-4 across nine playoff games.
His regular season line was modest, 6 goals and 11 assists in 75 games. The value shows up in the matchup work, not the box score.
Thompson, meanwhile, is the most dangerous forward in this series. He posted 40 goals and 81 points on a 7.1 million cap hit, and he's already at 7 points in 8 playoff games.
Lindy Ruff has leaned on the Thompson line in every key shift against Montreal's top six. Now the Sabres take that matchup back into Bell Centre with a controversy attached to it.
Now the bigger question is what the league does next. Officiating mistakes in May are remembered. The Habs won't get the goal back.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 10, 2026
| ||||
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Cutter Gauthier | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Mitch Marner | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Alex Newhook | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Cole Caufield | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Alexander Killorn | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Beckett Sennecke | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Tage Thompson | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Jake Evans | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Lane Hutson | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Zachary Bolduc | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Kirby Dach | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mikael Granlund | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Tomas Hertl | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Brett Howden | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Ian Moore | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Juraj Slafkovsky | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||