Sabres star crossed the line as the third man in and a suspension is now looming
Tage Thompson could be facing a Department of Player Safety review after throwing two punches at Zachary Bolduc while the Canadiens forward was being held.
The clip surfaced Thursday night and lit up Sabres-Habs Twitter within minutes. Thompson came in as the third man into a scrum. Bolduc was already restrained by another player. Two right hands landed clean.
Hockey fans immediately drew the comparison to Ridly Greig. The Senators forward got suspended for a similar third-man-in sequence in a previous season, and the precedent matters when Player Safety reviews this tape.
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The optics are the problem. Thompson isn't a fringe player you can shrug off. He's the Buffalo Sabres' top forward, a $7.14M cap hit, and the face of their offence.
In the regular season, the 28-year-old American posted 81 points in 81 games while finishing minus-6 on a team that scored 288 goals. Through 7 playoff games, he's added 7 points and a +6 rating.
Bolduc is the smaller part of this equation on the ice, but the bigger part of any Player Safety hearing. The 23-year-old Quebecer registered 30 points in 78 games for the Canadiens and added 4 points across 7 playoff games.
Buffalo took Game 1 of the series 4-2 at home on Tuesday. Game 2 was the setting for Thursday's incident. The Sabres lead the series and Lindy Ruff has the matchup advantage at home through two games.
Lindy Ruff could be without his star centre with a 2-0 series lead in hand
Lindy Ruff watched his team beat Boston in six in Round 1 and now sits in a 1-1 series. Losing Thompson to a suspension reshapes everything from line combinations to power-play structure.
The Sabres' season has been built around Thompson on the top line. A team that put up 109 points in the regular season runs through that name on every important shift.
Removing him from a Game 3 in Montreal is the kind of swing that changes a series. Bell Centre crowds eat momentum changes alive, and the Habs would be playing with house money and a healthy emotional spark.
The flip side is real. There are recent NHL precedents in this season's playoffs where similar acts went unpunished. The user noted the Senators-Hurricanes series produced one such moment that didn't end with a hearing.
Player Safety has been inconsistent for years. Reputation matters. So does context. So does whether a player was actively being restrained when the punches landed, which is the part of this clip that won't be easy for the league to wave off.
Martin St-Louis hasn't said anything publicly yet. The Canadiens bench boss will absolutely speak to it before Saturday's Game 3 in Buffalo if Bolduc has any kind of physical issue from the sequence.
The decision, whatever it ends up being, will tell you exactly how Player Safety wants to handle the rest of these playoffs. A pass on Thompson means the Greig precedent is dead. A suspension means the league is finally drawing the line in the same place every time.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 8, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Mitch Marner | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
| Alex Newhook | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Brett Howden | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Shea Theodore | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Zach Benson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alexandre Carrier | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Chris Kreider | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Michael Matheson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Brayden McNabb | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Beckett Sennecke | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nick Suzuki | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Josh Anderson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ivan Barbashev | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Phillip Danault | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Josh Doan | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Noah Dobson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jake Evans | - | 1 | 1 | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||