Fowler’s breakout and Bolduc’s finish lift Canadiens past Red Wings in a key early-season win

The Montreal Canadiens finally put a second win in the books, beating the Detroit Red Wings in what the matchup needed to become: a decisive result before the early-season gap gets too wide. The game did not look like a simple correction. Detroit arrived with a poor start, but the Red Wings pushed the Canadiens for long stretches, forcing Montreal to earn the final margin rather than banking on a comfortable pace.

Montreal’s path to the win leaned on impact from both ends of the roster. In the flow of the contest, Fowler’s performance stood out as the kind of game that can change how a team handles its next few weeks, especially when early points are hard to come by. Bolduc, meanwhile, was credited with the late finishing touch that “put the game away,” turning what had been a lived-in, tense evening into a result Montreal could carry forward.

Detroit entered the night at the bottom of the division standings at 1-3-0, and the visiting team’s first trip into the building came with an urgency that showed in their game plan. But Montreal also had something to defend internally: the expectation that this was a team capable of creating separation at home. The Canadiens leaned into that, and the final minutes reflected a roster that could still find the next gear once it mattered.

There was also a storyline outside the box score. With Dylan Larkin taking the ice in the first frame, audible chants of “We want Larkin!” carried during his early shift, according to the pregame description from Yahoo Sports. The atmosphere at Bell Centre became another reminder that hockey nights are shaped as much by familiarity and habit as they are by standings and schedules.

Georges Laraque had discussed on BPM Sports radio waves earlier that fans should try to draw out Larkin with cheering and chants, and the execution of that idea became part of the evening’s early rhythm. Even with the crowd finding its voice, Montreal still had to translate that home energy into a complete game, and it did, with Fowler’s standout play and Bolduc’s decisive scoring sequence doing the heavy lifting.

What to watch next is how Montreal responds to a “two-points” win of this kind. Teams can change their season trajectory not only by winning, but by learning what moments they can trust. If Fowler’s performance and Bolduc’s late-game reliability carry over, the Canadiens’ coaching staff will have a clearer map for managing roles and tempo in the next stretches. Detroit, for its part, will want to tighten the details that turn early-season games from “competitive” into “finished.”