In Montreal, the Canadiens were forced to play a frantic third period after taking a 5-0 lead on Saturday, over the Nashville Predators.
Matt Duchene scored a natural hat trick in the third period in a rally attempt.
The Habs won, 6-3.
“I felt like everyone was involved, everyone felt like they were able to get engaged in the game and everyone contributed,” the Canadiens’ Brendan Gallagher said.
Sam Montembeault made 33 saves in the Montreal win.
“Sam started well in net and we were engaged,” Montreal head coach Dominique Ducharme said. “We were a lot sharper mentally and it showed in the way we executed.”
Montreal improved to 5-13-2.
Artturi Lehkonen, Christian Dvorak, and Gallagher scored to give the Habs a 3-0 lead into the second period.
The Habs scored four times in the middle frame, including two hits from Ryan Poehling that were 37 seconds apart.
Duchene closed the five-goal deficit to just two.
“I think it shows a lot of character,” the Predators’ Roman Josi said. “I think a 5-0 game it’s easy to just go out there and play and be negative. And I think we had a good attitude. We tried to stay positive. We knew we could play a lot better but we told ourselves, ‘Let’s just go play our style, play our game and see what happens.”
Tyler Toffoli added an empty-net with 90 seconds left in the game.
“The feeling on the bench, we were still in a really good position, we knew we were fine,” Gallagher said. “Obviously the third one goes in, you’ve got to do a job for three minutes, which we did. But we’ll look at it. They made some plays, put some pucks in our net, but overall we liked our effort.”
Nashville dropped to 9-7-1.
“I just think we’ve got to reset here,” Predators head coach John Hynes said, “And we’ve got to make sure that we’re coming back to the rink on Monday ready to learn from this experience of what it is these last two games. We’ve got to elevate our plays in certain areas and that will be our focus.”
Juuse Saros got the start for the Predators and surrendered five goals and made 14 saves.
David Rittich relieved Sarros midway through the second period.made nine saves in relief.
“It wasn’t necessarily where [Saros] was bad,” Hynes said. “Montreal scored, and we had a couple of deflections, one hits a skate, a backdoor tap-in on the penalty kill, so it’s not really the goalie’s fault. It’s more like he’s got to get out of there and bring ‘Ritter’ in.
“… It didn’t change the momentum just because of the goalie change. [Rittich] made some good saves and then we got some opportunities to close in the third period but it wasn’t enough for us tonight.”
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