In Montreal, the Buffalo Sabres snapped an eight-game losing skid on Tuesday night with a 7-2 thumping of the Canadiens.
Jeff Skinner had a pair of goals in the Sabres win.
Craig Anderson made 29 saves in the Buffalo win.
“We were fortunate to get a couple early and then we settled in there,” Skinner said. “[Anderson] played really well. He made some good saves after that, weathered the storm, and we were able to build the game from there.”
The Sabres seemed determined as they struck for three goals in the first 2:18 of the first period.
Rasmus Dahlin, JJ Peterka, and Alex Tuch (power play) did the early damage.
“We came out with a mission,” Tuch said. “I thought we went hard to the net from the drop of the puck. We were getting pucks deep and playing simple. We had a lot of conversations, [Anderson’s] been talking about it a lot, and it’s playing on the [defensive] side, and I thought everyone did that tonight.”
The Sabres improved to 8-11-0.
“I think it was a bad game all around,” Montreal defenseman David Savard said. “We’ve got to move past it. And obviously we’ve got some stuff to learn, which is that bad start in the first period and it put us behind.
“And it’s a couple of games now and we’ve got to make sure we’re ready tomorrow to go and play our game. We’ve been in every game so far if we play our style and our system, and we didn’t do that tonight.”
Montreal’s Cole Caufield stopped the Sabres’ early run in the first period to make it 3-1.
Montreal dropped to 9-9-1.
Skinner scored his first of the game in the middle frame to make it 4-1 for the Sabres.
The Habs’ Sean Monahan scored in the third period to make it 4-2.
“I don’t think we were sharp pretty much anywhere,” Caufield said. “We had a couple of chances on the power play to get back in the game and kind of let our team down, let the momentum get away from us. So, there’s things we can clean up and lucky enough we get to play tomorrow.”
The Sabres responded with another three-goal run in the final frame.
Henri Jokiharju and Tage Thompson pushed the lead to 6-2.
“Obviously you get one, you start to feel pretty good, and you get a couple more and things start just rolling,” Thompson said.
Skinner hit for his second of the game to make the 7-2 final.
“We played with purpose, played to our identity, and the emotion they put in the game was outstanding,” Buffalo coach Don Granato said.
Jake Allen made 31 saves in the Habs loss.
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