In Montreal, Jesperi Kotkaniemi spoiled the Toronto Maple Leafs’ third period rally when he scored in extra time to give the Canadiens a 3-2 win in Game 6 on Saturday night.
The win forces a Game 7 in Toronto on Monday night.
“There’s no quit in this group, and even though we’ve given up leads in the last couple games, we grinded it out,” Montreal’s Shea Weber said. “Tonight, I thought ‘Pricey’ played unbelievable. He kept us in it, especially in overtime there when they were pushing, and gave us a chance, and obviously that made the difference.”
Carey Price made 41 saves for the win.
“Clearly, [Price] is playing very well,” Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “He’s the backbone of their team, we knew that going in, but I don’t feel like our guys are intimidated by any means. … We’re not getting a great deal of great looks at the goaltender, especially here tonight. We’ve got to do a better job of getting inside and making it hard on him.
“You look at a lot of the goals and the way they’re going in, they are hitting off bodies and redirections and stuff like that. We’ve got to focus on those kind of things.”
The game was scoreless through two periods when Corey Perry gave Montreal a 1-0 lead in the third.
Tyler Toffoli upped the lead to 2-0 before the midway point of the period.
“It was pretty cool going out for warm-ups and seeing them, seeing the towels go,” Toffoli said. “They were fired up and they definitely gave us that emotion to start the game. And I thought we played really good. Obviously, a couple of tough bounces, but we stuck with it, and obviously a big goal by ‘KK.'”
Jason Spezza got the Leafs on the board to make it 2-1, and TJ Brodie tied it up with less than four minutes left in the frame.
Montreal was 2-for-4 on the power play.
Toronto was scoreless in four chances with the extra skater.
“I think it’s obviously frustrating losing the game,” the Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews said. “But battling back the way we did, and obviously we had plenty of chances, it’s a game of inches out there in overtime to obviously end the game, and we couldn’t get it done. We’re going to move on, and we’ve got another game here. We’re going back home and we’ve got to be ready.”
Jack Campbell made 28 saves in the loss.
“We weren’t really sure how that one would go,” Keefe said about challenging Perry’s goal. “But given what was happening in the game, with the significance of the goal, we thought in the moment that it was worthy of a challenge, and having confidence in our penalty kill if we needed to get it done like it has all series for us. Obviously, we end up being 5-on-3, so it doesn’t go the way we want it to.”
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