In Montreal, the Canadiens lost their ninth straight, even with a new coach, this time, 2-1, to the Columbus Blue Jackets in a Saturday matinee.
Patrik Laine hit for a power play goal with 33 seconds left in regulation to give the Jackets the win.
“I was just looking to go pretty much as high as I could and it ended up being a pretty good shot,” Laine said.
Columbus improved to 23-22-1.
“Winning is important, and I’m a guy who looks to win, but if I look at the way that we’re developing so far it’s very encouraging,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, said.
Elvis Merzlikins made 30 saves in the Columbus win.
“We’re not in the playoffs right now but we’re working hard and it’s obviously nice to get wins,” Laine said. “And you need to get wins at this time of year if you want to make it and we’ve got to capitalize when other teams are losing and try to get back into the race that way. I think everybody has pride to play this game and play on this team.”
Cole Caufield was the lone striker for Montreal.
“I think Samuel played very well,” St. Louis said. “He kept us in the game, for sure in the first period and a bit late in the second because we had a good start to the second. And then we lost some momentum but our third period was really good.”
The Canadiens dropped to 8-32-7.
Oliver Bjorkstrand‘s goal gave the Blue Jackets a 1-0 lead.
Sam Montembeault made 40 saves in the Habs loss.
“They do a good job of kind of suffocating the game and that’s kind of what was happening to us early in the game,” the Canadiens’ Tyler Toffoli said. “We were fighting, we were battling and eventually we broke through, not only with the goal but we were creating we really good opportunities, and we had a chance to win today.”
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