The Montreal Canadiens were in need of a win on Tuesday night. They had not won a game in eight matches and the environment was getting ugly.
To make matters more difficult, the Habs drew the New York Islanders as their opposition.
The Canadiens responded by building a 3-0 lead and the holding off the Isles in a 4-2 win.
Carey Price made 21 saves in the win.
“There’s no question that we’ve definitely progressed towards this evening, but it’s nice to get rewarded for our efforts,” Price said.
Scott Mayfield and Mathew Barzal tried to rally the Islanders with two goals to trim the lead to 3-2.
“They played hard. I don’t think we matched it,” Barzal said. “It wasn’t our best game. We weren’t smooth on the transition and every time we turned it over, they just jammed it right back into our zone.”
Shea Weber scored late for the final score.
“We’ve got a pretty good challenge ahead of us again,” Canadiens head coach Claude Julien said. “These next four games are both back-to-back so we’re not out of the woods yet, but I like the way we played. We’ve just got to stay the course right now and understand why we’re winning, and we’re playing much better on both ends of the ice.”
Phillip Danault, Brendan Gallagher and Jeff Petry scored for the Habs for the 3-0 lead.
“I think we can enjoy it for a little bit, you know, obviously remember this feeling a little while,” Gallagher said. “But we know the situation we’re in; we can’t afford to relax now. The last few games we’ve really bought into the way that we have to play. It’s taken a little bit longer than we would have hoped, but we got a result tonight and hopefully this can be a big thing for us going forward.”
[WATCH: All Islanders vs. Canadiens highlights]
Thomas Greiss made 36 saves in the loss.
“We were down by two, so we kind of had to fight a bit,” the Islanders’ Scott Mayfield said. “There were definitely some chances to be had out there, but at the end of the day it’s a 60-minute game, and they dominated probably 50 minutes of it.”
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