The Montreal Canadiens improved their record to 2-1-1 with a 2-1 victory over the Buffalo Sabfree (1-3-) Friday night.
The Canadiens offense came from the blueline, with tallies from Alexandre Picard and a power play goal from Josh Gorges. It was the first goal, with the man advantage, for the Canadiens this season.
Derek Roy had the lone goal for the Sabres.
The game marke the 40th Anniversary of the Sabres, who began NHL play by hosting the Canadiens 40 years to the day.
Francis Bouchard, EOTP’s vidoe guru, was able to extract highlights of that first game for us, a 3-0 win for the Canadiens.
Habs legend Henri Richard was on hand for the anniversary ceremony, which drastically paled in comparison to how the Canadiens ceremonies go.
Picard opened the scoring, when his second attempt on the net deflected offf the skate of Sabres defenseman Chris Butler.
“I’m not that good of a pool player,” Picard said. But I’ll take one of those any night.”
Gorges then added to the lead, when he handled a bobbling cross ice pass and fired a slider comparable to what Steve Rogers threw with the Expos past Ryan Miller.
“The ice was bad, and pucks were bouncing,” Gorges said. “It wasn’t much of a shot, but at the last second, it dipped.”
Roy spoiled the shutout bid of Canadiens goaltender Carey Price, when he was left wide open and managed to recover, after he muffed his first shot attempt, getting the puck over the pad of Price.
Price had 21 saves on the night, while Miller had 16 in a losing effort.
“Overall he (Price) had a great performance,” Gorges added. “He made big saves when he had to.”
“The biggest difference tonight was we stayed out of the penalty box,” said Canadiens coach Jacques Martin, who acknowledged his teams discipline and defensive issues in prior games. “The last two games, I wasn’t pleased with how we played away from the puck.”
Montreal returns home for a Saturday meeting with the Ottawa Senators.
Scoring
First Period – none
Second Period
MTL – Picard (Subban) 1:29
MTL – Gorges PP (Hamrlik, Gomez) – 18:55
Third Period
BUF – Roy (Vanek, Stafford) – 3:26
