Desharnais scores in OT to lift Canadiens past Canucks

David Desharnais scored 3:25 into overtime to lead the Montreal Canadiens to a 4-3 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Monday night. Lars Eller’s short-handed goal roused the Canadiens from an 0-3 deficit, and Tomas Fleischmann tied it on a stoppable shot with 3:08 remaining.

“You don’t think about scoring three, you think about scoring one. You’re thinking one, and one, and one”.

In overtime, Desharnais completed a tic-tac-toe play with P.K. Subban and Fleischmann on a rush with a one-timer from the right side.

Instead, the Canadiens improved to 14-3-2 with their first OT win of the season.

Drafted in the second round of the 2008 National Hockey League Entry Draft by the Florida Panthers, Markstrom was packaged in the trade that sent Roberto Luongo back to the club he’d played for over half of his National Hockey League career.

The Canucks have a power-play goal in each of their past two games, so there’s progress.

If the Canadiens are doing anything differently, it’s not, Eller believes, on goal.

“It gave them a little bit of life but it shouldn’t have turned the whole thing around”, Weber said. Rookie Mike Condon has gone 4-1-2 in Price’s absence.

It was the Canucks that ended Montreal’s nine-game winning run to start the season with a 5-1 decision in Vancouver on October 27.

The Canucks had several chances to make it 2-0 before Jared McCann did so on a power play at 17:54, calmly chipping the puck in from the side of the net after Henrik Sedin’s slap-pass stranded the goalie.

Before then, Montreal looked headed toward an a second straight embarrassing loss on home ice after a 6-1 drubbing at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday night.

David Backes scored twice for St Louis, one of them coming on the powerplay, as they saw off Winnipeg 3-2. “We overcame a lot”. We’re going to be in these spots a lot more throughout the season, so hopefully this is the last time it happens and we can learn from it and fix it.

“It takes a lot of character to come back from that”, said left winger Lars Eller, whose shorthanded tally kicked off the rally. “We weren’t bad but they capitalized on a power play. We knew we could be better but we couldn’t get down on ourselves either”.

“I’m having a tough week”, Miller said after allowing four goals in a 4-2 loss to the Maple Leafs. It wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that Therrien nailed him to the bench, because Semin slid a few places left, then right before finishing the game one spot inside the curved glass, a long way from the daggers in his coach’s eyes.

“We’d rather be up 3-0, but it’s very satisfying”, Eller said. “It builds character in the room”.