MONTREAL (AP) — Evgenii Dadonov scored twice and Samuel Montembeault made 24 saves to help the Montreal Canadiens beat the Central Division-leading Winnipeg Jets 4-1 on Tuesday night.
Mike Hoffman and Josh Anderson also scored for injury-riddled Montreal. Justin Barron, Christian Dvorak and Kirby Dach each had two assists. Barron played against brother Morgan Barron for the first time in the NHL.
Montreal was without Juraj Slafkovsky, Joel Armia, Jake Evans and Jonathan Drouin, while Rem Pitlick and Rafael Harvey-Pinard were emergency call-ups.
“You’re always stronger collectively than you are individually,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “We’re trying a culture where even if you lose guys, guys that play important roles, anyone that steps in plays the way we play.
“When you have that mentality, you can deal with the turnaround and we’re working really hard on that. You’re going to lose players but you need to keep building.”
Kyle Connor scored his 200th NHL goal, connecting on a power play early in the second period to open the scoring for Winnipeg. Connor Hellebuyck made 24 saves for the Jets.
“We weren’t skating, our legs weren’t going, our compete wasn’t good, our execution was way off,” Jets coach Rick Bowness said. “There’s very few games that we’re going to walk out of a rink and say we didn’t deserve to win, but that certainly was that tonight. We didn’t deserve to win that.”
Montreal scored three times in the second.
After missing an opportunity from the slot, Dadonov took Barron’s pass from the slot and whipped in a one-timer to tie it. Montreal took the lead when Hoffman beat Hellebuyck with a wrist shot, and Dadonov made it 3-1 off a rebound.
Anderson completed the scoring in the third.
UP NEXT
Jets: At Toronto on Thursday night.
Canadiens: Hoat Panthers on Thursday night.
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The Associated Press
