MONTREAL – Craig Anderson made 48 saves in a spectacular goaltending performance as the Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-2 Thursday night in Game 1 of their playoff series.
Jakob Silfverberg and Marc Methot scored early in the third period and gave Ottawa a lead in the best-of-seven series, with Game 2 set for Friday night at the Bell Centre.
Erik Karlsson and Guillaume Latendresse also scored for the Senators, who were outshot 50-31 but saw Anderson easily win the goaltending duel with Carey Price, who was beaten twice through the pads.
Rene Bourque and Brendan Gallagher replied for Montreal, which set a team record for shots in a regulation-time playoff game.
The first playoff series between the Northeast Division rivals didn’t take long to get nasty.
Montreal center Lars Eller was wheeled off on a stretcher bleeding heavily from the nose and was taken to a hospital with what the team said were head and facial injuries after he was caught with a shoulder to the face on an open-ice hit from Senators defenseman Eric Gryba.
Gryba was given an interference major and a game misconduct and could face further discipline from the NHL.
Anderson was especially sharp as the Senators weathered a fierce Canadiens push in the first 10 minutes before Karlsson put on a show for the opening goal at 17:25.
The 2012 Norris Trophy winner skated through the neutral zone and worked a give- and-go with Kyle Turris, redirecting the return pass along the ice between Price’s pads.
Montreal fired 27 shots in the middle period, a team playoff record, and tied the game. Bourque came out from behind the net and beat Anderson with a backhander under the crossbar on Montreal’s 34th shot.
After Gryba’s hit and with Ottawa down a man, Gallagher banged in Tomas Plekanec’s pass to put Montreal in the lead.
But the Senators killed off the rest of the penalty and trailed just 2-1 after two period as Anderson kept it close.
Then Silfverberg tied the game with a shot from the top of the right circle that went straight through Price’s pads early in the third. period. Less than two minutes later, Methot swept a shot from the point through traffic that caught the top corner.
Latendresse, a former Canadiens player who was booed by the Bell Centre crowd, went to the net and saw Silfverberg’s shot go in off his body to ice the victory.
NOTES: The Canadiens are 50-28-2 all-time in playoff openers. Ottawa is 11-11. … Montreal sat out Jeff Halpern, Colby Armstrong, Davis Drewiske and Yannick Weber. … Peter Regin, Matt Kassian, Patrick Wiercioch and Andre Benoit were among Ottawa’s scratches. … The game was the first between Canadian teams in the playoffs since 2004.
Leave a Reply