In Montreal, the Canadiens seem to have found a lost soul in Ilya Kovalchuk.
On Saturday, Kovalchuk had a goal in regulation and potted a shootout goal as the Habs recovered from a Vegas Golden Knights rally in the third period for a 5-4 shootout win.
It was Peter DeBoer’s first loss as the Vegas bench boss.
Carey Price got the win for the Canadiens – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“I thought we showed a lot of character,” DeBoer said. “That’s a big hole anywhere, particularly in this building, so I thought it didn’t rattle us. I actually thought at the end of the first, you know, they earned their goals. We had some opportunities we didn’t execute on; we could have had a couple too. So that’s a big deficit, we didn’t quit, we got to work and scratched out a point, an important point.”
Carey Price made 31 saves in the win.
“It might not have been pretty, but it was exciting for our fans,” Montreal coach Claude Julien said. “We got the two points, we’ll take them and head off on vacation.”
Reilly Smith forced the game into extra time with a tying goal at 19:52 of the third period.
Nick Cousins scored twice for the Canadiens.
“We definitely don’t like making it easy on ourselves,” Cousins said.
Joel Armia also scored for the Habs and Tomas Tatar was credited with the deciding goal in the skills competition.
We did a good job battling back,” Smith said. “We’re still putting ourselves in the same situation where we’re getting off to slow starts and the other teams are capitalizing. So we’ve got to find a way to turn that around because it’s too hard to come back in every game.”
Max Pacioretty, Jonathan Marchessault and Paul Stastny scored for the Knights.
“I feel like our team is playing with good intensity. We’re working hard, that’s our identity, and we’ve played two good games overall,” Marchessault said.
[WATCH:Â All Golden Knights vs. Canadiens highlights]
Marc-Andre Fleury made 26 saves in the loss.
“It’s a tough battle every night to get some points but everybody’s committed and wants to do the right things to keep coming in the standings and make the [Stanley Cup] Playoffs,” Fleury said.
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