BUFFALO, N.Y. — Phillip Danault settled into his office 4:19 into the first period of Game 2 against the Buffalo Sabres on Friday and got to work. He anchored himself firmly into the left faceoff circle of the offensive zone, planting his skates at the hashmarks before leaning over the dot and beating Tage Thompson clean to draw the puck back to Mike Matheson.
The linesman called for a restart and kicked Thompson out.
That’s when Alex Tuch came in.
Danault beat him clean, too, once again pulling the puck back to Matheson, who took a shot on net that Alex Lyon gloved.
The puck was then brought right back to that left dot.
Danault got set, this time with left-hander Ryan McLeod opposite him, and you’ll never guess what happened.
“Obviously, on (Matheson’s) goal (to make it 2-0) he won a third face-off in a row,” said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki. “It’s huge when you’ve got a guy that’s snapping it back like that. In the offensive zone, on the penalty kill, for late d-zone faceoffs, having a guy like that is pretty important.”
For stretches of the regular season, it felt like that was Danault’s entire relevance to the Canadiens. Once a great two-way centre — and not all that long ago — he had been reduced to more of a one-way face-off guy and penalty-killing specialist.
If the Los Angeles Kings didn’t see him that way, they’d have never shipped him back to Montreal on Dec. 19.
But the Canadiens had a need for exactly what Danault had become and the Kings cashed in, getting a 2026 second-round pick while freeing up salary-cap space and room for Alex Turcotte to move up their depth chart.
It wasn’t the first time a team had given up on Danault’s value as a complete player. At the end of the 2021 season, after the Victoriaville, Que., native helped the Canadiens to within three wins of their first Stanley Cup since 1993, then-general manager Marc Bergevin let him walk to free agency.
The Kings gave him a six-year, $33-million contract, which immediately began paying dividends.
Danault scored 27 goals and 51 points in his first season in Los Angeles.
He then put up three goals and five points in the first of four consecutive first-round series against the Edmonton Oilers that saw him primarily tasked with shutting down Connor McDavid.
He was great in that role, and also pivotal at both ends of the ice in the regular season from 2022 to 2025 as one of the best defensive forwards in the league and a player who still contributed 144 points over 240 games.
Then, Danault began this season on the wrong foot, failing to score a goal and notching only five assists through 30 games before being traded to Montreal.
The Canadiens needed stability, and the 33-year-old stepped up and provided it — and a bit of offence, too, producing six goals and 12 points despite mostly fourth-line ice-time and defensive-zone deployment through 45 games.
Still, there was faint hope Danault could level up in the playoffs, but that’s exactly what he’s done since the Canadiens got going in Tampa three weeks ago.
“He’s helped a lot,” said Jake Evans, who played on Danault’s line through much of the seven-game series the Canadiens won over the Lightning. “I think we needed a guy like that, a veteran that is comfortable in tough situations and really good at face-offs.”
But Danault has been much more than just that through nine games of these playoffs, even if he only has two assists to his name.
The six-foot-one, 201-pound centre has played big, notching 19 hits. He’s also had 18 shot attempts and generated nine individual scoring chances (including six high-danger ones) while posting a 45 per cent expected goals mark despite starting only 27 per cent of his shifts in the offensive zone, per naturalstattrick.com.
Danault has also won a ton of faceoffs — 60 per cent of them, and 10 of the 15 he took in Game 2 against the Sabres.
“And yeah, that was a huge draw (on Matheson’s goal),” said Evans. “He’s done that a lot before where he’s won big draws in the o-zone where we’ve scored right after. And defensively I think that’s the biggest thing. When you have a lead like that, you want a guy like that out there. Even when we ice the puck three times, he’s still out there winning those draws.”
Danault’s been out there seemingly making all the right plays all over the ice, winning matchups against premium players and checking every box.
“Details is what make the difference at the end of the day,” he told reporters from the Canadiens hotel before they returned to Montreal on Saturday.
It’s Danault’s details that have made him the Canadiens’ unsung hero of these playoffs to date, and those faceoffs he drew back in succession to get them a two-goal lead they never relinquished in Game 2 against the Sabres were perfect examples of his subtle, but vital, impact.