CANADIENS
Montreal

DEVILS
New Jersey

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Danault – Radulov
Lehkonen – Galchenyuk – Gallagher
Byron – Plekanec – Shaw
Andrighetto – Desharnais – Mitchell
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov – Weber
Emelin – Petry
Beaulieu – Nesterov
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Montoya

Scratches

Michael McCarron, Brian Flynn, Jordie Benn

Injured Reserve

Game Report

This started out as one of those typical Habs – Devils games in New Jersey: slow, boring, painful to watch. And then it got worse.

By the end of two periods, the Canadiens didn’t have much of anything going. A guy on Twitter was so confident of the Habs impotence on offence, he made a grand statement and a promise.

The Devils had a 1-0 lead and it looked like that was going to be enough. For the season, New Jersey had a 17-0-5 record with a lead going into the third period.

When Devils defenceman John Moore sent a seeing eye shot from the point through a few bodies to the back of the Canadiens net, it seemed as if it was over.

But just 11 seconds later, Alexander Radulov and Alexei Emelin would combine to start the comeback.  That comeback looked to be derailed when Travis Zajac backhanded an Al Montoya rebound into the Montreal goal with the visitors shorthanded.

Just 43 seconds later, Max Pacioretty scored his 30th goal of the season and the Canadiens were once again with one goal. Pacioretty scored the game-tying goal with just 53 seconds left in the third. Alex Galchenyuk was the overtime hero earning the game’s first star for the second game in a row.

(Be sure to head to Twitter to collect your $10.)

While Claude Julien continues to look for forward combinations that create scoring chances, one thing is clear: the Canadiens score goals when Galchenyuk plays with Pacioretty and Alexander Radulov. Otherwise they struggle.

It was another overtime win for the Canadiens. They are still without a regulation win in the month of February. The Habs will have one more opportunity on Tuesday night at the Bell Centre when they host the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Claude Julien was non-committal on whether the newly-acquired Jordie Benn would be in the lineup. 

~~~

▲     Max Pacioretty, Alexander Radulov, Alex Galchenyuk, Shea Weber, Andrei Markov, Alexei Emelin

▼     Artturi Lehkonen, David Desharnais, Brendan Gallagher

1.  Alex Galchenyuk  MTL
2.  Max Pacioretty  MTL
3.  Travis Zajac  MTL

• “It’s two huge points for us. It took us two periods to get it working, but we accomplished a lot in the third. We showed a lot of character. When they went up 2-0 [early in the third], it would have been easy for us to give up, but instead we got one right back. I imagine it’s been tough for the guys in here recently, but tonight was a big character win for us.”

Max Pacioretty

• “The great individual effort on [Alex Radulov’s] goal got the boys going. Sometimes when confidence is down, it only takes that one play, and that’s why we signed him. He’s a game changer and a difference maker – and he showed that tonight.”

Al Montoya

• “Unbelievable. We play in a great city that expects a lot from us, and we have high expectations of ourselves too. Hats off to these guys for being able to go out there, and doing what they did tonight. Going into the third period late, [to get goals like that from] the captain – the hero – it was fantastic all around.”
• “Going into the third period, we were down by one, but still in the game. We hadn’t played our best hockey yet, so as a group we knew we could be better. Our leadership stepped up, and at the end of the day that’s the story.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com