In Columbus, Sean Kuraly hit for a pair of goals in a four-goal third period for the Blue Jackets to help them to a 6-4 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night.
“We just kept playing, and if you try to do things the right way, it’ll go your way. And that’s what happened tonight,” Kuraly said. “It doesn’t happen every night.”
Joonas Korpisalo made 38 saves in the Blue Jackets win.
Columbus improved to 6-9-1.
“This wasn’t pretty tonight at all, but you have to win ugly in this league at times,” Blue Jackets coach Brad Larsen said. “And I thought [Korpisalo] was outstanding.
“He didn’t have a ton of work in the first, (but) he made some good saves. But the second and third, he was busy, way too busy for my liking. It felt like we had one of those grenades with a pin pulled.”
The Blue Jackets took a 2-0 lead in the first period on strikes from Cole Sillinger and Gustav Nyquist.
In the middle frame, Jordan Harris. and Josh Anderson scored for the Canadiens to get them even at 2-2.
Columbus’ Boone Jenner and the Habs’ Brendan Gallagher exchanged goals in the early minutes of the third for a 3-3 tie.
“We learned a tough lesson tonight,” Gallagher said. “The first period might have been our worst period of the year. You get behind the eight ball, it doesn’t matter what you do after that, it’s tough to come back. You can’t expect to do it.”
Kuraly and Mathieu Olivier gave the Blue Jackets a 5-3 lead in the third.
Nick Suzuki scored eight seconds after the Olivier strike to get the Habs within 5-4.for Montreal
Kuraly sealed the Columbus win with an empty-net goal at 17:47 for the 6-4 final.
Montreal dropped to 8-8-1.
“To me, it’s the breakaways more than the goals that were scored on us,” Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. “Some of the breakaways were self-inflicted. We were careless. We were down two, I thought we could have been down five.”
Sam Montembeault made 23 saves in the Habs loss.
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