The Montreal Canadiens keep rolling, extending their winning streak to six games with a 4-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday night. With the victory, Montreal has an Eastern Conference best 54 points.
Montreal scored 2:30 into the game and took an early 2-0 lead on goals from Max Pacioretty (16) and David Desharnais (6), improving to 16-0 when scoring the first goal.
The Penguins were plagued by sloppiness in all three zones and struggled getting clean zone entries in the second and third period once the Canadiens took a 3-1 lead less than two minutes into the second period.
“The second period, I thought they stood us up at the line,” Mike Johnston said of the Penguins struggles to gain the Canadiens zone. “We didn’t get pucks in behind them and we couldn’t make plays through traffic or make the quick play in the neutral zone to get around people.
While Johnston admitted the Canadiens “did clog it up”, he was more critical of the Penguins lack of execution.
Among the lone bright spots for the Penguins was David Perron who scored in his Penguins debut, burying a setup from Sidney Crosby in the slot in the first period.
That’s a spot Perron is going to score a lot of goals here.
In Edmonton there was a lot of complaints with Perron about his play away from the puck, just like everyone on that roster. Tonight his all around game was strong, especially with back pressure through the neutral zone and into the Penguins defensive zone.