BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Montreal Canadiens love to put process over results.

But in the immediate aftermath of a loss, and in the midst of a streak you’re not particularly fond of, that kind of perspective can be difficult to maintain.

Especially in the playoffs, where the importance of results multiplies.

Take, for example, Cole Caufield’s take on the Canadiens’ five-on-five game in the second and third periods of their Game 4 loss to the Sabres.

“I’ll watch the game back, but I think at five-on-five we started to take over in the second and third there,” Caufield said. “We obviously had our chances on the (power play). Hockey is a weird sport that way, where one bad bounce changes the outcome. We’ve got to swallow it and move on.

“I think we liked our five-on-five game down the stretch there, we tilted the ice a little bit, so we’ve just got to finish on our chances and we’ll be fine.”

Now, that was an answer about the entire team’s game.

Moments later, we walked over to Nick Suzuki and asked if he had to rank his line’s performance at five-on-five in Game 4 among all 11 playoff games he had played, where would he rank it?

“I don’t know,” Suzuki said initially. “I don’t know how much time we had, we probably had a lot more time in-zone on the PP, but I felt like we were kind of dying with plays off the rush or turning it over. We’ve got to find a way to produce, so I think it’s on all of us to be a little bit better.”

Now, that was an answer specifically about his line, so the parameters were different for Suzuki than they were for Caufield.

But considering the Canadiens’ top line — one of the best forward lines in the NHL in the regular season — has played a little over 95 minutes at five-on-five in these playoffs, according to Natural Stat Trick, and has been outscored 6-0 while producing a shade under 50 percent of the expected goals and high-danger chances in those minutes, that overall lack of results might have been clouding Suzuki’s view of how his line performed in Game 4.

Suzuki’s primary matchup at home was with Josh Norris and his line centering Zach Benson and Josh Doan — the Sabres’ top producing line in the series. In the 6:12 where Suzuki shared the ice with Norris at five-on-five, the Canadiens generated 11 shot attempts and allowed none, though the actual difference in shots on goal was only 2-0 and in unblocked shots was 6-0. Still, the Canadiens controlled 100 percent of the expected goals in those minutes.

Overall in the game against all opposition at five-on-five, the Canadiens had a 16-3 edge in attempts, 9-3 in unblocked attempts and 5-2 in shots on goal, 3-1 in high-danger chances, while controlling 62.03 percent of the expected goals in 9:16 of ice time.

That is a lot of good process, even if the results did not follow.

But if the Suzuki line puts together another game like that in Game 5, the results likely will not be far behind.

Lindy Ruff working overtime on the officials

The fact that the Canadiens had seven power-play opportunities in Game 4, and the way some of those opportunities came about, was not lost on Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff.

He is a veteran coach. He has been doing this for a long time. And he is hardly the first coach to try to send messages to the officials through the media.

Ruff hinted after Game 4 that he felt some of the calls against the Sabres were the result of embellishment by the Canadiens. He didn’t say it overtly, but it was difficult not to get the hint. On Wednesday, speaking to reporters at their Montreal hotel before flying home to Buffalo, Ruff went there again.

“I know Montreal’s got a good power play,” Ruff said, “but I think they’re going down easy.”

Now, to be fair, Ruff made sure to note his players need to be more careful with their sticks, and also said every team in the league will hit the ice when they feel a stick on them, especially in the playoffs, where one power play can make the difference between a win and a loss.

Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis has been known in the past to complain about officiating in the media. He did so in last year’s playoffs after a Game 4 loss at home to the Washington Capitals, in fact.

But he hasn’t done so in these playoffs, and even went so far as to praise how the officials have communicated their decisions to him in the playoffs, even if he doesn’t necessarily agree with them. In the end, he said he considered complaining too much to the officials to be wasted energy, because they never change their minds.

However, he couldn’t help but respond to the opposing coach essentially calling his players divers.

“Was he talking about his team, too?” St. Louis told reporters at the airport before flying to Buffalo. “That’s seeing it through his lens, so I’m not going to comment on how he sees things through his lens. That’s his vision of things.”

It is worth noting that after Game 2 of the series, Ruff was asked about all the chatter happening around the net of Canadiens rookie goalie Jakub Dobeš, and he said at the time, “That’s all stuff that happens inside of a game, I’m pretty sure Montreal guys skated by our guys too. I just don’t complain about it as much as they do, probably.”

Ruff’s complaint box has become much fuller since making that comment.

The (other) time the Zamboni door burned the Canadiens

When St. Louis mentioned after Game 4 that the Canadiens had been “caught” by a bad bounce off the Bell Centre Zamboni door, he noted how the goalie had come out to play the puck and that was what caused the goal against.

What we believe St. Louis was referring to was this goal on Jan. 10 against the Detroit Red Wings.

It is worth noting that it is Jacob Fowler who leaves his crease to play that puck, and not Dobeš, but that bounce landing directly on the stick of Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond is what caused the Canadiens to institute a new rule on pucks shot into that corner.

Stay in your net.

But perhaps there should be an added nuance to that rule. Not only should Canadiens goaltenders stay in their net on that play, but they should also hug the near post.

Kaiden Guhle has four defence partners

Since the return to the lineup of Noah Dobson in Game 7 against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the player it has impacted the most is easily Kaiden Guhle.

Essentially, he has become a rover ever since.

With Dobson playing primarily with Lane Hutson, and Mike Matheson playing with Alexandre Carrier, Guhle’s shifts have been sprinkled throughout the defence corps this entire series. While his primary partner is Arber Xhekaj, Guhle has seen significant minutes at five-on-five with just about everyone through the first four games of the series.

This is not new for Guhle, or for the Canadiens. They did this routinely during the regular season, and that helps with the adaptation now.

“I think if this would have been the first time it happened it maybe would have thrown the guys for a bit of a loop,” Guhle said before Game 2 of the series. “It helps that we did that a little bit during the year. It’s the cards we’re dealt. Guys are fine with it. We don’t really have a choice, so we’ve got to do it.”

Guhle often refers to this situation as being the cards they were dealt. It makes it clear that this is not ideal, but it also makes it clear that this defence corps remains incomplete, that it is a box that remains unchecked in the overall Canadiens rebuild.

It is a situation necessitated by the fact that there are only two right-shot defencemen on the roster instead of three, and there are five defencemen that are trusted to play a regular shift instead of six.

“It’s not a surprise for our guys, I think we’ve done it all year when we were healthy,” St. Louis said before Game 4. “They’re all important, they have different roles. Their starts on the ice on faceoffs are not the same. We try to maximize everybody’s strengths as much as we can. Them being used to (it); we go (with) five a lot, and whether it’s (Xhekaj) or (Jayden Struble), they’re giving us really good minutes too.

“They’re not uncomfortable with the way we’re running it, and I think doing that in the regular season at a certain point in time, that certainly helps.”

The fact that the Canadiens find themselves tied 2-2 in the second round of the playoffs with a defence that requires this degree of micromanagement — not to mention the total lack of five-on-five production from the top forward line — is a testament to what they have already accomplished in spite of those obstacles.

It is also a sign of what this team might be truly capable of when the rebuild is closer to completion.