In Montreal, the visiting New Jersey Devils snapped a seven-game skid with a 7-1 win over the Canadiens on Tuesday night. 
Michael McLeod hit for a double for New Jersey.
New Jersey improved to 16-26-5.
“We’ve been struggling lately so it’s nice to get back in the win column regardless of who you’re playing or how it happens,” New Jersey’s Ryan Graves said.
Jon Gillies made 30 saves for the win.
Brett Kulak was the lone striker for the Habs.
“Give Jersey a little bit of credit, they came out skating and moving pretty good,” the Canadiens’ Ben Chiarot said. “We looked like a team that’s coming off the bye week. Maybe a little rusty, maybe didn’t have our legs under us right at the beginning, so that’s a bad combination.”
Dawson Mercer, Pavel Zacha, and Jesper Boqvist added single markers for New Jersey.
“We played pretty good defensively and the offense showed there tonight,” Mercer said. “Our last few games we had some trouble getting goals up on the board, and finally tonight we put seven in the back of the net. So that was great for us just to get everyone a touch, get back in the feeling and hopefully carry that on to the next couple of games.”
Montreal dropped to 8-30-7.
“You would think after the break that you’d be refreshed and ready to go, but you guys witnessed it out there,” the Canadiens’ Josh Anderson said. “I feel embarrassed, to be honest with you, so we better be ready to go next game [Thursday, against the Washington Capitals].”
Nico Hischier and Tomas Tatar also scored for New Jersey.
“We were fortunate on a couple of goals,” New Jersey head coach Lindy Ruff said. “I think their goalie lost his footing on Nico’s goal. But you’ve got to have some breaks along the way. We haven’t had a lot of breaks recently and I thought tonight we got some. We deserved a lot of the goals we got. We had good net-front presence, rebound goals, second opportunity goals, stuff we’ve been talking about, and I thought our defense and our motion inside the offensive zone really helped us.”
Cayden Primeau made 27 saves in the Canadiens loss.
“We’ve just got to get out of this funk,” Anderson said. “We’ve got a lot of hockey games together [four in six days] and it is not fun losing right now. It’s not fun coming to the rink. We have to set our mindset right right now and just regroup, to be honest with you. We’ve got to make hockey fun again and just refresh, throw this one out the window and come back to work next game ready to go because you just can’t get embarrassed like that. It’s not right, so we need everybody going next game.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.