Shane Wright and Johnathan Kovacevic scored their first NHL goals. Jake Allen made 31 saves.
Shane Wright scored his first NHL goal against the team that spurned him, while Juraj Slafkovsky tallied an assist in a 4-2 win for the Montreal Canadiens over the Seattle Kraken Tuesday night at Climate Pledge Arena.
It was the first battle between 2022 NHL Draft first rounders. Jake Allen made 31 saves to secure a road win for his tired, injured club. The Habs ended their four-game Western road swing with five of eight points.
Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Montreal Gazette, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Montreal Gazette Headline News will soon be in your inbox.
Prior to puck drop, the team announced David Savard is day-to-day with an upper-body injury and Sean Monahan has a lower-body injury, which will be reevaluated upon the team’s return to Montreal. Coach Martin St. Louis dressed seven defencemen.
Two players scored their first NHL goals in the first period. Defenceman Johnathan Kovacevic ripped a one-timer from the point for his first. Cole Caufield retrieved the puck.
Needless to say, Wright was motivated to prove the Canadiens wrong for passing him over in last summer’s draft. His line had jump in the first, and he lit the lamp for his first as a pro from a pass by Oliver Bjorkstrand. That’s how the first period ended.
History was made early in the second. At 2:05 in the period, Nick Suzuki set up Caufield for his 15th of the season.
Just seven seconds later, Josh Anderson made it 3-1 with his seventh.
The two goals were the fastest the Habs have ever scored on the road in franchise history.
On only 8 occasions in a regular season contest has a #Canadiens team recorded a faster occurrence of 2 goals and all of those have happened on home ice. The most recent of those came on Nov 1, 2018 when MTL broke the NHL record by scoring twice in 2 seconds against the Capitals https://t.co/uyWmwwazAM
— StatsCentre (@StatsCentre) December 7, 2022
Before the period was out, Rem Pitlick scored his first of the season to give the Habs four goals on eight shots against Martin Jones.
Despite the low shot total, the Habs looked like they were cruising to a victory. But Jared McCann scored with less than a second remaining in the period to pull Seattle to within two.
Montreal entered the third period of a back-to-back up 4-2 but with a collapse the day before still in the rearview. Allen was there to shut the door this time around, making 14 third period saves to seal the win against a Kraken team that’s leaps and bounds ahead of where they were last season.
The Habs were outshot 33-16, but came away with the victory despite the depleted lineup. They have a few days to rest up and get some bodies back before playing at home against the Kings on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Liveblog commenters saw the Habs learn from Monday’s loss with a quality third period shut down performance.
3. “Other than his first couple of shifts, Shane Wright has been average.” -Ryan Katz
2. “Pop some tums marty u gonna need it.” -Michael Wered
1. “BTW – 11 different Habs with points tonight, no one with more than 1. Yeah, we had the CC/NS connection come through, but for the second game in a row, we are getting secondary scoring.” -Michael Way
