The Montreal Canadiens have hit a skid; they are winless in six games now after losing to the visiting New Jersey Devils on Thursday, 6-4.
In their last three games, the Canadiens have yielded 20 goals in three regulation losses.
“We’ve got to get out of this one way or another,” Canadiens defenseman Shea Weber said. “Obviously we’re creating offense, and that’s a positive, but we’ve got to find a way to keep pucks out of our net. We’re making life really hard on ourselves and our goalies, and that’s not fair to them.”
Mackenzie Blackwood made 44 saves for the Devils who improved to 9-11-4.
“They came hard all night,” Blake Coleman said. “It felt like a bit of a track meet at times, and Mackenzie was strong. He’s been great for us, and he was no different tonight. He made a lot of big saves that kept us either in the lead or kept us tied at the time, and when you get those big saves, you build confidence as a team. And he deserves a ton of credit for the win.”
Coleman had two goals on the night.
Artturi Lehkonen, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Brendan Gallagher, and Joel Armia scored for Montreal.
“We know how good he is, it’s not his fault,” Gallagher said. “That’s on us. I mean, we make the mistakes. You can’t give up these high-danger chances. He’ll make the saves he’s supposed to make, and he makes saves that he’s not supposed to make, which he did tonight, too, but too many chances against.”
Miles Wood and Joel Armia scored for the Devils.
“We were able to use our speed in the transition and a couple of great plays by [Gusev] to get the pucks to the net, and we got rewarded,” Coleman said.
Travis Zajac and Jesper Boqvist also scored for New Jersey.
[WATCH:Â All Devils vs. Canadiens highlights]
Carey Price made 29 saves in the loss.
“Those guys in there, they’re frustrated as [heck],” Canadiens head coach Claude Julien said. “They want to do well, they want to represent the Montreal Canadiens the right way, they don’t like what’s going on and neither do we. I’m frustrated as [heck] right now, I can tell you that much.
“I’m tired of losing and at one point we have to take matters in hand here and we’ve got to fix those things. And as long as we don’t play better defensively, nothing’s going to get fixed. So we’ve got to think about keeping the puck out of our net before we think about scoring four or five goals a game. We need to fix that first.”
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