- Cole Caufield torched himself for Montreal’s Eastern Conference Final exit
- The 51-goal regular season turned into 6 goals across 19 playoff games
- Read below for the full quote and the video from locker cleanout
Cole Caufield isn’t sugarcoating Montreal’s exit.
Asked Monday about what went sideways in the Canadiens’ 4-1 Eastern Conference Final loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, the 25-year-old winger pinned the blame squarely on himself, per TSN.
“Honestly, I sucked,” Caufield said at locker cleanout. “That’s just plain and simple. I want to be a lot better, I expect more from myself, and my teammates and coaches do, too.”
Catch the clip:
The numbers don’t argue with him. Caufield put up a career-best 51 goals and 88 points in 81 regular season games, finishing second in the league behind Nathan MacKinnon’s 53. Across 19 playoff games, that production cratered to six goals and 13 points, with his shooting percentage falling from 19.8 to 14.
Montreal’s offense went silent after a stunning Game 1 win in Raleigh. The Habs dropped four straight, blanked 4-0 in Game 4 and bowed out 6-1 in Game 5, with Caufield’s lone goal the only one Carolina conceded. The Canadiens also set a Stanley Cup Playoffs record for fewest shots on goal across a three-game stretch (43).
Here’s how the series ended:
The bigger picture still works for Montreal. The Canadiens punched out the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven, knocked off the Buffalo Sabres in seven, and ran into a Hurricanes team now headed to the Stanley Cup Final against Vegas. Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton spent their year-end media availability sounding like a front office that knows the rebuild label no longer applies.
Caufield, Lane Hutson, Juraj Slafkovsky, Noah Dobson, Nick Suzuki, and Mike Matheson are all signed long-term. Ivan Demidov is next on the extension docket, after his own honest read on what separated Carolina from the Habs this spring. The standard is changing in Montreal, and Caufield isn’t hiding from where his game has to land in 2026-27.
