Canadiens down Canucks in OT with 'character' comeback
The Montreal Canadiens erased a 3-0 Vancouver Canucks deficit to win 4-3 in overtime.
And the game was an exercise in opposites of a team where everything was going its way and a team that just can’t figure out how to win at this juncture in the season.
The Habs improved to 14-3-2, tied for the best point total in the NHL with the New York Rangers at 30. The Canucks continued to swoon, having lost six of their last seven games, a stretch where they’ve gone 1-4-2. They’re six contests into a seven-game road trip.
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The Canucks went up 3-0 at the 3:17 mark of the second period on a power play goal by Daniel Sedin. Then Montreal began to chip away. First forward Lars Eller scored a shorthanded goal at the 8:40 mark of the second. Captain Max Pacioretty cut the deficit to 3-2 at the 10:53 mark of the second.
Tomas Fleischmann knotted the game at 3-3 at the 16:52 mark of the third period.
Said Eller via the Montreal Gazette:
“It takes a lot of character to come back from that,” he said. “We overcame a lot. We really found our game in the second and third and pushed the play into their end. Over 60 minutes, we deserved to take two points.“We did some good things,” Eller said of the home team’s first-period effort. “We weren’t awful but they capitalized on a power play. We knew we could be better but we couldn’t get down on ourselves either.”
David Desharnais blasted the OT winner past Vancouver’s Jacob Markststrom.
Via the Gazette:
“The last two periods we worked pretty hard and had a lot of shots,” said Fleischmann. “We were thinking we might have scored earlier than with three minutes left in the game but we did it.”
The Canucks fell to 0-6 this season in OT, the first year of the league’s new 3-on-3 format in the extra session.
Per NHL.com:
"There's [no margin for error]. It's crazy, it doesn't feel like hockey," said Canucks forward Chris Higgins, whose shot over the Canadiens' net created an odd-man rush that led to Desharnais' goal. "It feels like summertime. I personally don't like it, but chances definitely come out of nothing."
Vancouver will try to salvage their voyage Wednesday at the Winnipeg Jets. Winnipeg is probably just as desperate as Vancouver, after losing their sixth straight Monday.
The only extra drama that came out of Montreal was that forward Alex Semin “was glued to the bench after taking a dumb holding penalty early in the third period” according to the Gazette
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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