Two NHL second-round games tonight. Buffalo hosts Montreal at KeyBank Center at 7 p.m. ET on TNT, truTV, and HBO Max; the series is tied 2-2 after Zach Benson's third-period power-play goal won Game 4 in Montreal 3-2 on Tuesday — Benson's twenty-first birthday and his fifth goal of the playoffs. [1] Vegas hosts Anaheim in Game 6 at 9:30 p.m. ET, with the Golden Knights up 3-2 in the series. [2] The series winners face Carolina in the Eastern Conference Final and the Edmonton-or-Dallas winner in the West.

Carolina swept Philadelphia in four games to reach the conference final — the first sweep of any second-round series in three years. [3] Florida, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion, is not in the playoffs at all this year. Aleksander Barkov tore his ACL in October; Sergei Bobrovsky's hip surgery cost him three months; the Panthers finished sixth in the Atlantic and missed the postseason for the first time since 2023. The dynasty pause is what opens the bracket.

The Sabres are the harder story to tell briefly. Buffalo had not made the playoffs since 2011 — a fourteen-year drought, the longest in the NHL. The team's social media account spent April 14 publishing "receipts" against doubters, an X exchange with former NHL defenseman Ryan Whitney that ended with Whitney's "0.000%" comment on the Sabres' playoff chances printed on a Seneca One billboard in downtown Buffalo. The Sabres' admin pinned each receipt as the team won. They beat Boston in seven in Round 1; the second round is the part the franchise has not played since the George W. Bush administration. [4]

The Canadiens are the older story. Montreal has not won the Cup since 1993 — thirty-three years — though they reached the final in 2021. Tonight's loser has Saturday's Game 6 in Montreal as the elimination test. The Buffalo-or-Montreal winner faces a Carolina team that has played four playoff games and won them all.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos