Fans are furious after Texier's nasty cheapshot caught on camera
Alexandre Texier walked away with a two-minute slashing minor for a play that looked a lot more like a spear on K'Andre Miller late Saturday night.
The clip exploded on social media within minutes. Officials kept their whistles tucked, the Canadiens forward stayed on the bench, and the debate started immediately.
Spears trigger an automatic match penalty under the rulebook. That's not a judgment call. That's a definition.
The end of the 2nd period sequence shows the stick driving up into Miller's midsection, not a routine slash on the hands or shaft.
It's the kind of moment that drags playoff officiating right back into the spotlight, especially in a postseason where calls have felt uneven from round to round.
Texier owns a 21-point regular season with Montreal and has chipped in 4 goals and 4 assists across his 15 playoff games, including two game-winners.
Hurricanes lose a top-four blueliner to the play
K'Andre Miller has been a quiet driver for Carolina this spring, posting 6 assists and a plus-10 rating through 9 playoff games for Rod Brind'Amour's group.
Losing a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5 defender to any kind of shift, even briefly, changes the matchup math on Carolina's top pairing.
Martin St-Louis didn't lose a body. Brind'Amour absorbed the contact. And the scoreboard sometimes hides what a missed call really costs.
The video tells its own story. Stick up, blade extended, contact to the body, no escalation from the officials standing five feet away.
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The Department of Player Safety can still step in after the fact. Whether they do, given the two-minute call already issued, is a different conversation.
Carolina sits as a top-two team in the league at 53-22-7. Montreal punched in at 48-24-10. Neither side can afford a swing call going the wrong way at this stage.
This will be that kind of series with lots of little cheap shots behind the refs' backs.
This is only the beginning, and it's only going to get worse as the Conference Final moves forward...
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MAY 23, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Josh Anderson | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Phillip Danault | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Mark Jankowski | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Eric Robinson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Kaiden Guhle | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jaccob Slavin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | - | - | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Jackson Blake | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Cole Caufield | - | - | - | |
| Kirby Dach | - | - | - | |
| Ivan Demidov | - | - | - | |
| Jakub Dobes | - | - | - | |
| Noah Dobson | - | - | - | |
| Jake Evans | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||