Price, Canadiens halt Columbus streak with 3-1 win

It is certainly becoming clearer this season that the Montreal Canadiens are two different clubs with Carey Price in or out of the lineup.

On Monday night, the Canadiens defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets, 3-1, behind 37

Carey Price made 37 saves in win over Columbus Monday night – file photo courtesy of Lewis Bleiman

saves from Prices.

“It might have been the two best goalies in the world going head to head tonight, and when you’re able to get a two-goal lead it’s tough to score on [Price],” Brendan Gallagher said of Prices and  Sergei Bobrovsky.

Gallagher and Jonathan Drouin staked the Habs to a 2-0 lead with first period goals.

Those two goals came on the Habs’ first two shots of the game.

“That was big for us,” Gallagher said. “You look at how this team’s been having success, the biggest part of it has probably been [Bobrovsky], and for us to get a couple by him early, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy and the rest of the way he made some pretty big saves as well. You know we got a couple by him, we were able to defend as good as we could, and obviously Price was back there to make a couple of saves when we needed it.”

Pierre-Luc Dubois had the lone strike for the Jackets.

Columbus was looking for its seventh straight win but came up short in the loss; they were 0-for-5 on the power play.

“Being able to get five (penalty) kills tonight was huge for us,” Price said.

That futility was not lost lost on their head coach either.

“We had 10 chances on the power play, didn’t score,” Jackets head coach John Tortorella said. “I am tired of dissecting our power play. We had 10 chances on the power play.

“Tonight’s problem was we didn’t finish. We developed a lot of scoring chances on it. This is my last night that I’m speaking on the power play because I’m tired of talking about it. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that.”

Andrew Shaw sealed the win with an empty-netter late.

[WATCH: All Blue Jackets vs. Canadiens highlights]

Bobrovsky made 25 stops in taking the loss.

“We played a 40-minute hockey game, and you can’t do that. It’s just a lousy first goal,” Tortorella said of the lack of a full game effort from his club. “You don’t see that very often with [Bobrovsky]. I was hoping our team could pick up [Bobrovsky]. The first period, we just didn’t compete. After that, I thought we played a good 40 minutes, but we don’t find a way to beat Price and they win the game,”