MONTREAL — Kirby Dach and Jonathan Drouin both scored in the first half and the Canadiens beat the Lightning 3-2 on Tuesday night.
Mike Matheson also scored for the Canadiens, who lost six of their previous seven — including a 5-3 loss at Tampa Bay on Saturday. Nick Suzuki had two assists and Sam Montembault stopped 31 shots to move up to 14-14-3 in the season.
“Sam played great,” said Canadiens coach Marty St. Louis. “I think everyone played well. I can’t think of a guy who wasn’t that good tonight. So when you have everyone on board it’s hard to play against us.
“I liked our game. It was fun because we played against the same team as in the last game. We had a lot of examples and you can really show which aspects need to be worked on and how we want to stand up against them and what we want to do.”
Montembault agreed, adding, “We did a lot of videos. Marty did a really good job making sure we were ready tonight. … It’s fun playing back-to-back against them, you know what they’re going to do so you can focus on yourself.”
Brayden Point and Pat Maroon had goals for Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasilevskiy finished the game with 17 saves. The Lightning have lost back-to-back since winning four out of five.
“The goalie is part of the game, we’ve seen that many times over here where (Vasilevskiy) does exactly the same thing,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “I thought (Montembeault) was their best player tonight.”
Dach, returning from 16 games missed with a lower body injury, put the Canadians 8:27 on the scoreboard when his shot from the slot caught Vasilevskiy’s pads and slowly trickled over the goal line. It was Badger’s 13th season.
Drouin made it 2-0 as he ran through the left circle, got a pass from Denis Gurianov and quickly scored his second.
Point scored with a one-timer from the left circle following a pass from Steven Stamkos at 8:58 of the second to put the Lightning on the scoreboard. It was points 44.
Matheson restored Montreal’s two-goal lead when his shot from the left point went through the traffic in front and past Vasilevskiy with 3:02 remaining in the middle.
“Everything they touched went into the net,” Cooper said. “We lost our shot on goal tonight for some reason so that’s a tough question for us.”
The Flash moved to 3-2 at 5:06 in the third when Ross Colton’s centering pass for Corey Perry was deflected by Canadian defender Justin Barron’s left skate to Maroon on the right doorstep and he tapped it in for his third.
In the closing seconds of the game, Tampa Bay’s Mikhail Sergachev shoved Montreal’s Josh Anderson into Lightning’s empty net. Anderson collided with the post and was helped off the ice. The Canadians later announced he was undergoing further testing and would miss the upcoming trip to Boston. … Montreal also announced that D Kaiden Guhle’s season is over. He’s ruled out with a high ankle sprain.
Drouin has 19 points (two goals, 17 assists) in 23 games since the beginning of 2023.
