Canadiens power past Maple Leafs
Sheldon Souray had his team-leading 22d goal and the Canadiens got three goals with the man advantage in a 5-4 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs last night in Montreal.
Saku Koivu and Michael Ryder assisted on each other's power-play scores, Tomas Plekanec and Mike Johnson scored at even strength, and David Aebischer made 32 saves to help the Canadiens move up to seventh in the Eastern Conference with 72 points.
Montreal went 3 for 4 on the power play, improving its conference-leading success rate to 23.2 percent.
"We didn't waste any of them, that's for sure," Johnson said. "They're an offensive team, they're a team that attacks and we knew that despite being down three going into the third they were going to come back hard and they managed to get a couple. But we settled things down in the last 10 minutes and tried to limit their quality chances."
Bates Battaglia, Bryan McCabe, Jeremy Williams, and Alex Steen scored for Toronto, which remained 10th in the conference.
Alex Kovalev assisted on Plekanec's first-period goal as he returned to the Canadiens' lineup after missing seven games because of an elbow injury.
Toronto's Andrew Raycroft stopped 11 of 16 shots before leaving 12:24 into the second after Souray drove a slap shot past him into the top of the net off a faceoff as Montreal scored its third power-play goal just 2 seconds into its third opportunity to take a 5-2 lead.
"I didn't think I was horrible out there, I just couldn't find a way to get in front of enough of them," Raycroft said.
Flames 5, Coyotes 2 -- Wayne Primeau scored his first two goals since coming to Calgary from the Bruins, helping the host Flames hand Phoenix its seventh loss in eight games. David Moss, Kristian Huselius, and Andrei Zyuzin also scored for the Flames, who moved into a tie with Minnesota for second place in the Northwest Division -- two points behind Vancouver. Zyuzin's goal was his first in 56 games.
Ducks 3, Sharks 2 -- Teemu Selanne scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period, and visiting Anaheim padded its Pacific Division lead. Ilya Bryzgalov made 40 saves in his first start since Feb. 7 for the Ducks, who moved seven points ahead of San Jose and Dallas by surviving the Sharks' 42-19 shot advantage.
