In Montreal, Matthew Tkachuk hit for a hat trick and four points on Thursday to help the Florida Panthers down the Canadiens, 5-2.
Tkachuk has 100 points n the season.
The Panthers kept pace with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the race for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference. The Pens downed the Nashville Predators, 2-0, on Thursday.
“We know where we’re at right now, so we know how important these two points are each and every night,” Tkachuk said.
Florida improved to 38-31-7.
The Panthers were coming off an overtime win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday.
“You know there were parts of our game we didn’t care for much last night, [but] we kind of found a way to win,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “But I thought we were good, solid and simple here tonight on a back to back. We kind of corrected some of the things that we didn’t do well last night, we kept our game fairly straight-lined and not a lot of panic in our game. I thought we were pretty good.”
Alex Lyon made 18 saves in the win.
“We handled business tonight, that’s what it felt like,” Lyon said. “And if you want to do damage at this time of year, you have to be able to do that sometimes and really control the game. I thought tonight we controlled the game as well as since I’ve been up here (from the American Hockey League).”
Sean Farrell scored his first career NHL goal to give the Canadiens a 1-0 lead in the first period.
“I saw it take a weird bounce and it was trickling toward the net, the goalie was kind of off his angle a little bit, but I didn’t think it was going to find its way all the way through,” Farrell said. “I was trying to hit ‘Gally’ on the far side. The defenseman got a piece of it, and good bounce for me.”
Florida’s Anton Lundell scored the first of a double in the opening period to tie the game, 1-1.
Montreal dropped to 30-40-6.
“After Sean’s goal I thought we were feeling pretty good, and then it just kind of went downhill from there,” Canadiens forward Nick Suzuki said. “Getting the first goal is important, we just didn’t do anything with it.”
Tkachuk hit for his first of the night, off the power play, to give the Panthers the lead, 2-1, late in the stanza.
Tkachuk then pushed the lead to 3-1 in the middle frame, he reached the 100-point milestone on the goal.
“Wow, it’s pretty cool, but that will probably be the last time I’ll ever be in the same sentence as [Gretzky],” Tkachuk said.
Lundell’s double came midway through the third period to balloon the advantage to 4-1 for the Panthers.
Montreal got one back late in the third on a power-play marker form Rafael Harvey-Pinard at 18:35.
Tkachuk completed his hat trick with 20 seconds left in the game, into an empty net for the 5-2 final.
Sam Montembeault made 25 saves in the Habs loss.
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