In Montreal, the visiting Vegas Golden Knights held a 2-1 lead over the Canadiens through periods in a rather matter of fact game, until the third period when the two teams combined for seven goals before the Golden Knights skated off with a 6-4 win on Saturday night.
Reilly Smith hit for a double for Vegas, who won their seventh straight.
“We’re having a lot of fun right now, winning definitely adds to that,” Smith said. “We’re trying to keep the ball rolling and keep the positivity going, but it’s nice to be able to play when you’re winning, and you just try to keep those streaks going.”
Vegas moved to 11-2-0.
“I think every game there’s different guys that show up, and I think it was the same tonight,” said Golden Knights forward Nicolas Roy (goal). “That’s what good teams do.”
Adin Hill made 27 saves in the Knights win.
Nick Suzuki struck for a pair of goals for the Habs. His first goal tied the game, 2-2, early in the third.
“Other guys have been getting chances, it just hasn’t been going in for them,” Suzuki said. “We’re the first line for a reason. We need to go out there and produce. And if we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our job to help the team win. So we’ve been playing pretty good hockey, we just need to find a win.”
His second came after Vegas reeled off three straight for 5-2 lead, to cut the score to 5-3.
“We weren’t able to kill that penalty that gave them the lead and the game just started kind of slipping away from us,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “But I thought we fought and got a chance at the end to pull the goalie and see what could happen, but we just fell short.”
Montreal dropped to 5-6-1.
Cole Caufield had a goal and two points for the Habs.
Smith, Roy, and Jonathan Marchessault (power play) scored the three goals for the Golden Knights in response to Suzuki’s tying marker.
Nicolas Hague and Keegan Kolesar also scored for the Golden Knights.
“I think we’re a veteran group,” Marchessault said. “It doesn’t matter whoever scores or gets the lead or not, I think as a group we know that the game is never over until it’s over, and we’re always going to bounce back.”
After Smith connected on his goal for a 6-3 lead to Vegas, Montreal’s Juraj Slafkovsky scored with less than five minutes left in the game for the 6-4 final.
Jake Allen made 36 saves in the Canadiens loss.
“We just kind of dug ourselves too big of a hole and we need to clean that up,” Suzuki said. “It’s a good team over there and we gave them a good game, so we can still improve.”
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