Red Wings rally past Canadiens

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In Detroit, the visiting Montreal Canadiens could not handle the luxury of two, two-goal leads in their game with the Red Wings on Tuesday night.

The Habs led 2-0 and 3-1 and lost 4-3.

/Andreas Athanasiou had two goals, including game-winner, for Detroit – file photo by Lewis Bleiman

“This stings because we know this is a game we should have won,” Canadiens head coach Claude Julien said. “We killed a penalty at the start of the third and we needed to get some momentum from that, but we had some real sloppy mistakes and bad decisions.”

Jonathan Bernier made 19 saves in the win.

“It’s one of those things you can’t explain,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “It isn’t like we have great matchups against them, and before this, there was a long stretch where they totally owned us.”

The Habs have lost five straight.

Jeff Petry and Nate Thompson  staked the Canadiens to the 2-0 lead.

Robby Fabbri cut the deficit in half.

Nick Suzuki made it 3-1 in favor of Montreal.

“We had a lead here before and we couldn’t hold it, so we knew what we had to do,” Suzuki said. “I’m putting a lot of that on me.”

Andreas Athanasiou struck twice for the Wings, once to get them to 3-2 and the eventual game-winner.

“I thought we carried a lot of the play in the second period, but we were still down two and then we didn’t get anything on that power play,” Blashill said. “You don’t want to put yourself in a position of needing three goals against Carey Price.”

Mike Green had a goal to tie the game at 3-3.

“I got lucky, because I almost fanned on it,” Green said. “It’s an honor to reach those marks, and I want to thank all my teammates along the way.”

[WATCH: All Canadiens vs. Red Wings highlights]

Carey Price made 21 saves in the loss.

“For some reason, we have an inability to play 60 good minutes and it has cost us a lot of games this year,” Julien said. “I don’t know if it is a lack of confidence or a lack of being able to play 60 minutes, but we played two good periods tonight and ended up with another lost game.”