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Ryan Poehling’s life has been an emotional roller-coaster for the past eight days, but when the ride came to end Saturday night, he was standing on the Bell Centre ice as more than 20,000 fans celebrated his arrival in the NHL with a loud ovation.

And what an arrival it was.

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Poehling scored three goals in regulation and then added the winning goal in a shootout as the Canadiens defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 6-5.

“I’m in shock,” Poehling said.

Photo by Dave Sidaway / Montreal Gazette

It was a better shock than the one he suffered a week earlier when his St. Cloud State team was upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament. It was the second consecutive year St. Cloud went into the tournament as one of the favourites, but lost in the first round.

“I think we did all the right things, but sometimes in hockey it doesn’t go your way,” Poehling said of the 2-1 loss to 16th-seeded American International College. “It was kind of hard to deal with, but if we had won that game I probably wouldn’t have been here today.”