(Montreal) Joel Armia scored with a little over four minutes remaining in the third period, and the Montreal Canadiens surprised the Colorado Avalanche with a score of 4-3 Monday night at the Bell Centre.
Armia pounced on a loose puck in front of the net and backhanded it behind Alexandar Georgiev. It was his seventh goal of the season.
Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki led the Canadian attack with two points each.
The Habs scored two power play goals, those of Caufield (13e), in the third period, and Juraj Slafkovsky (5e), in the first period. Suzuki had a hand in both goals.
Rafael Harvey-Pinard, late in the second period, added his first of the season at the expense of Georgiev, who faced 34 shots.
Brilliant defender Cale Makar was the visitors’ offensive mainstay with a one-goal, two-assist performance.
Ross Colton and Devon Toews also thwarted the vigilance of Jake Allen, who scored his first victory in Montreal since October 28, and his fifth of the season. Allen blocked 32 pucks.
Upon his return to Montreal, Jonathan Drouin obtained an assist on Colton’s goal, scored during a power play.
He also received a nice round of applause after the presentation of a tribute video in the first period, but he was also heckled several times when he touched the disc.
Starting Wednesday, the Canadian will begin a series of three road games in four evenings. This sequence will begin with a stopover in Newark, where the Habs will battle the New Jersey Devils.
One #20 scores, the other replies
The first period offered some very divided play, but the first five minutes of action did not suggest anything of the sort.
The Avalanche quickly took control of the territory and found themselves on the power play in the fourth minute of play when Michael Pezzetta was caught for holding Fredrik Olofsson.
Barely a minute later, Colton, stationed at the mouth of the net, had two chances to beat Allen and didn’t miss the second.
Limited to just one shot after almost seven minutes of play, the Canadian responded in very similar circumstances. Even the Canadian’s scorer number – 20 – was the same as that of his rivals.
Forgotten in front of Georgiev’s goal, Slafkovsky received a nice pass from Nick Suzuki and beat the Avalanche goaltender on his second attempt just 24 seconds after a penalty called against defenseman Sam Malinski.
From that moment on, the Martin St-Louis players asserted themselves and threatened Georgiev several times, to the point of giving themselves a 16-13 advantage in shots on goal after 20 minutes.
An important moment
If the Canadian finished the first period well, we certainly cannot say that he continued this momentum at the start of the middle period.
Midway through the period, the Avalanche held a 12-3 advantage in shots, and a one-goal lead, thanks to the 10e from Makar after 61 seconds of play, on a shot from the blue line that Allen probably didn’t see, because of the heavy traffic in front of him.
In the wake of this supremacy, the Avalanche even found itself with a two-player power advantage for 26 seconds, following infractions called against Joel Armia and Harvey-Pinard.
The Canadian held on and it seemed to give him back his wings to the point of managing to tie the score before the end of the period.
From the right flank, Harvey-Pinard managed to infiltrate to the front of the Avalanche net and after seeing Georgiev block his first shot, he managed to spot the puck near the Avalanche goaltender and slip it between his pads, with just under four minutes remaining in the engagement.
The Canadian took the lead for the first time in the game at 1:52 of the third period thanks to Caufield, with the help of a wrist shot into the upper part of the net, during a power play.
The Avalanche, however, responded midway through the period as the two clubs played four-on-four.
Toews beat Allen with a wrist shot that first hit the left hand of Jayden Struble, helped by Mikko Rantanen and Makar, for his third point of the evening.
But Armia would restore the lead to the Habs who then resisted the final attacks from the offensive pillars of the Avalanche.