In Montreal, the visiting San Jose Sharks hung a 3-2 loss on the Canadiens on Thursday night.
The win snapped a 12-game skid the Sharks had suffered through.
“I feel relieved to get the win, and it was a pretty good performance from us,” the Sharks’ Mario Ferraro said. “Obviously some things we could still do better, but it’s a little bit of weight off our shoulders for sure. It feels good.”
Mackenzie Blackwood made 33 saves in the win.
San Jose moved to 10-29-3.
“It’s been a tough go here, a lot of good players in there and a lot of guys, a lot of character, that have fought through a lot of adversity,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “And it’s not easy to move past some of the things we’ve been through, but we did it tonight and got a huge win for ourselves.”
San Jose took a 2-0 lead in the game.
Luke Kunin struck at 5:19 of the opening stanza to stake San Jose to a 1-0 lead.
“I don’t think that they took the game, by any means,” San Jose’s Mike Matheson said. “I think what they got we gave to them. And even with that, I think we still had a chance to win, and so it’s frustrating to let those two points go.”
Fabian Zetterlund pushed the lead to 2-0 at 17:25 of the first.
The Canadiens dropped to 17-18-6.
Brendan Gallagher trimmed the deficit to 2-1 at 17:46 to send the game to the middle frame with the Sharks up. ,
“For whatever reason, execution hasn’t been there the past few nights,” Gallagher said.
Nikita Okhotiuk gave the Sharks a little breathing, 3-1,with what would be the game-winner 16:44 of the middle frame.
“I thought our start was just OK, and then I thought we got better and better as the game went on,” Quinn said. “And you don’t go through with what we’ve been through and all of a sudden feel great about yourself; you’ve got to earn it. And we started earning it shift after shift and that’s how we have to get out of this, and we took a big step today.”
The Habs’ Josh Anderson pulled them to within one at 3-2 at 16:26 of the third for the final count on the scoreboard. 
Sam Montembeault made 32 saves in the loss.
“I don’t know if it was necessarily our opponent that caused us to play the way we did tonight,” Matheson said. “I think the fact of the matter is we just needed to be better.”
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