You would have been forgiven if you turned away from the New York Rangers match with the Canadiens in Montreal on Saturday. After 20 minutes of play, the Canadiens held a 3-0.
Three minutes into the middle frame it was 4-0, and more than likely you were willing to have your eyelids taped open and be forced fed the Islanders’ point streak in a rerun loop.
Funny thing about this match, the Rangers scored six of the seven goals and defeated the Habs, 6-5.
It was the fourth time in franchise history that the Rangers rallied back from a deficit of four or more goals.
Alexandar Georgiev was left in the game to work out the issues and he made 38 saves to get the win.
“It’s just an unreal feeling that the guys kept at it, nobody gave up,” Georgiev said. “It’s rare that you get to come back from 4-0. It’s a huge mental win.”
Filip Chytil, Pavel Buchnevich and Brendan Lemieux scored in a span of just over three minutes to cut the deficit to 4-3.
“I’m sure this term gets used by more than one person, but I know Patrick Roy said it to my dad (Claude Lemieux), and they tried to use it throughout their careers when they were winning, and it’s, ‘Never too high, never too low,'” Lemieux said. “And I think that that was one of those things. You know, we were playing well, and the score didn’t reflect the way we were playing.
“So we just had to stay with it, not too high, not too low, not down because the score’s down, or not up because the score is up, and I think tonight we emulated that.”
Lemieux’s second goal of the came on a shortie and tied the game, 5-5.
Montreal got two goals each from Artturi Lehkonen and Max Domi.
“It’s different than those three other games,” Canadiens head coach Claude Julien said. “You’ve got a 4-0 lead, you finally are scoring goals, but then you get sloppy. And I told the guys after the first period we were up 3-0 for one reason only, we capitalized on our chances, they didn’t, because we didn’t dominate the first period. [The Rangers] came to play tonight.”
Shea Weber added a single marker for the Habs.
Montreal took a 5-3 lead in the third period before the Rangers reeled off three straight for the win.
“You know that’s on us as a group, nothing else you can point your finger at. It can’t happen in this league,” Montreal’s Brendan Gallagher said. “Too many guys, even when we had the lead, and I definitely put myself in that category, weren’t good enough, and we had too many passengers tonight. We had a few guys going, but a lot of us, for whatever reason, weren’t good enough.”
Artemi Panarin cut it to 5-4.
Jacob Trouba got the winner on a shot from the point.
“That’s what we’ve been looking for all year, is that resiliency,” the Rangers Chris Kreider said. “I mean, that happens sometimes in hockey, right? But for once, we didn’t get away from what we needed to do and we were rewarded.”
[WATCH: All Rangers vs. Canadiens highlights]
Carey Price made 28 saves for the loss.
“We were still up,” Price said. “We were pretty confident going into the third period. We just wanted to stay on the gas, and I think they came out motivated as well. That’s a tough loss for us, for sure.”
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