In Newark, the Montreal Canadiens scored three times in the first and third periods, and defeated the New Jersey Devils, 7-4, on Thursday night.
Jake Allen made 33 saves in the Canadiens win.
“[Allen is] one of the guys that you look at in our group who’s basically on every night,” Montreal’s Chris Wideman said. “And when we have a chance to win he’s usually playing very well, so he played awesome tonight. He kept us in the game in the second and thankfully we were able to reward him with a win, and he deserved it.”
Montreal moved to 20-40-11.
Nick Suzuki and Jake Evans scored in the opening frame to give the Habs a 2-0 lead.
Tomas Tatar scored for New Jersey to get them on board at 1-2.
Cole Caufield added another goal in the frame to make it 3-1.
New Jersey’s A.J. Greer and the Canadiens’ Joel Armia traded goals in the middle frame for a 4-2 Canadiens lead after 40 minute.
“We gave up some early goals that maybe we shouldn’t have,” Greer said.
Wideman and Christian Dvorak scored early in the third period for a6-3 lead.
New Jersey’s Ty Smith scored to get one back at a 6-3 Habs lead.
New Jersey picked up a faint pulse when Jesper Bratt scored midway through the third period to cut the Canadiens lead to 6-4.
Kale Clague scored for Montreal in the 14th minute of the period for the 7-4 final.
Andrew Hammond got the start for New Jersey, and surrendered six goals before getting the hook early in the third period. He made 13 saves.
“I don’t know if [Hammond] played that bad,” Suzuki said. “We just kind of got lucky that they were going in and we didn’t really play that well to deserve those, but we’ll take those all the time.”
Nico Daws made six saves in a mop up role.
“We know one thing for sure, we had a tough night in goal,” New Jersey coach Lindy Ruff said.
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