Canadiens add to success vs. Canucks with 5-1 win

[March 11, 2021]    Jesperi Kotkaniemi collected one goal and one assist while Carey Price made 23 saves as the Montreal Canadians continued their mastery of the Vancouver Canucks with a 5-1 road win Wednesday night.

Montreal Canadiens defenseman Joel Edmundson (44) checks Vancouver Canucks forward Bo Horvat (53) in the first period at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports

Tyler Toffoli collected a pair of assists for the Canadiens, who have a 5-0-2 record against the Canucks this season and have scored at least five goals in six of those games. Montreal boasts a 3-1-3 mark since coach Claude Julien was fired Feb. 24 and replaced by Dominique Ducharme.

Price, a British Columbia product who had a relatively easy night compared to his Vancouver counterpart, has a career 16-2-5 record against the Canucks.

Thatcher Demko stopped 40 shots for the Canucks, who were besieged from the drop of the puck en route to seeing their three-game winning streak snapped.

Montreal fired 15 of the game's first 18 shots before Kotkaniemi opened the scoring. After stripping the puck from Nate Schmidt, Toffoli fed a pass to Kotkaniemi in the left circle, and he scored his first goal in nine games at the 15:34 mark.

Corey Perry doubled the lead 2:09 into the second period. Paul Byron made the pass while leading a two-on-one rush, and Perry executed a perfect deke to net his fourth goal of the season.

Brock Boeser's team-leading 14th goal, a top-shelf one-timer from just beyond the left faceoff dot for the power-play tally at 4:54 of the middle frame, gave the Canucks life, but the Canadiens later pulled away.

Shea Weber restored Montreal's two-goal lead with a power-play goal, a blistering one-timer from the point with 5:49 remaining in the middle period. Weber's goal moved him into a tie with Mathieu Schneider for 15th on the NHL's all-time list for career goals by a defenseman (223).

Then, third-period goals by Jeff Petry -- who leads all NHL defensemen with 10 goals and became the first Canadiens defenseman in 83 years to need 25 or fewer games to score 10 goals to start a season-- and Phillip Danault rounded out the scoring for the Canadiens, who have a difficult turnaround when they play in Calgary on Thursday.

The win came at a cost for Montreal, however, as defenseman Ben Chiarot left the game due to an injury after a first-period fight with J.T. Miller.

--Field Level Media

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