(Columbus) The Canadian quickly broke what was becoming a bad trend.
Arber Xhekaj and David Savard scored early in the third period, Samuel Montembeault made 29 saves and the Montreal squad defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-1 on Wednesday at Nationwide Arena.
The Habs had allowed at least four goals in each of their previous five games. He had also been guilty of poor encounter starts in his four most recent outings.
This time, the Canadian managed to limit his opponent’s chances. Montembeault took care of the rest.
“I liked our start to the game, especially when you compare it to other debuts recently,” said Canadiens head coach Martin St-Louis. We were up against a team that defended well, didn’t cheat and always had players in the neutral zone.
“You had to be careful with the zone entries and in general we did a good job. »
Sean Monahan added an insurance goal in an empty net for the Canadian (10-9-1), which therefore scored a second victory in five games (2-3-0).
Montembeault became the first Canadiens goaltender to allow less than two goals in a game this season. St-Louis did not want to advance on the possibility of giving more starts to the 26-year-old Quebecer, even if he praised his work.
“He got us out of trouble,” St-Louis said.
“The guards sometimes put bandages on the wounds,” he added.
Mathieu Olivier was the only scorer for the Blue Jackets (7-11-1). Joonas Korpisalo stopped 26 shots.
Xhekaj and Johnathan Kovacevic were back in the Canadiens’ defensive squad, taking over from Jordan Harris and Chris Wideman.
Kaiden Guhle did not play alongside Savard for the first time this season. Guhle was paired with Joel Edmundson, and Savard with Mike Matheson.
The Canadiens will play their next game Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. when they visit the Chicago Blackhawks.
attack by defense
Neither team had a particularly impressive first half. Few quality shots were fired during the engagement.
The game picked up a little in the second half. Korpisalo distinguished himself in front of Monahan when the Canadian was playing on the power play.
Montembeault then saved the skin of his teammates, stopping Olivier and Gustav Nyquist on breakaways during the same sequence.
The Canadian also had luck when Johnny Gaudreau missed an open net on the power play, when Montembeault was out of position and Savard was lying in the goalkeeper’s semi-circle.
Meanwhile, Cole Caufield missed an open net after a Blue Jackets blunder following a bold Korpisalo outing as the teams played four-on-four.
The Blue Jackets finally opened the scoring after 68 seconds in the third period. Olivier took advantage of a missed lob by Matheson to fire a shot from the slot and he beat Montembeault on the side of the mitt.
The Canadian responded 90 seconds later. Xhekaj surprised Korpisalo with a long wrist shot. The Blue Jackets goalie didn’t seem to see the puck due to the traffic in front of him.
Savard then gave the Habs the lead 57 seconds later. He supported the attack and the throw-in from Kirby Dach in his direction deflected off his left skate before ending up in the back of the net.
Korpisalo kept the Blue Jackets in the game by robbing Monahan with his mitt midway through the final third. His teammates, however, came up against Montembeault at the end of the game.
Monahan delivered the knockout blow by shooting into an empty net with 1:53 left on the clock.
Locker Room Echoes
Kirby Dach noted that the Canadiens players wanted to redeem themselves after the poor performance the day before against the Buffalo Sabers.
“We followed the same plan and played the same way. We had made a group decision to play better. We are smart enough to know that we were far from an acceptable level against the Sabers. We wanted to bounce back and that’s what we did. »
David Savard admitted that Samuel Montembeault’s two saves on breakaways from the Blue Jackets represent an important moment in the match.
“It gave us some rhythm, but we have to wake up. It’s careless mistakes when we leave a loose player like that behind us. Our goaltender made two big saves and that gave us some juice for the third period. »
Samuel Montembeault did not want to take full credit for the win.
” It’s a team sport. When guys score a big goal or block a dangerous shot, it gives me confidence. Everyone worked for the win tonight. »