One night after allowing just 15 shots, the Montreal Canadiens surrendered 46 on Tuesday. Luckily for them, Jaroslav Halak was on top of his game.
The Habs' goaltender made 45 saves while Tomas Plekanec had three assists as the Canadiens extended their winning streak to three games with a 4-1 victory against the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Place.
Mike Cammalleri, Marc-Andre Bergeron and Andrei Kostitsyn all scored for the second night in a row, and Scott Gomez added an empty-net goal for Montreal, which earned a 3-1 win on home ice against Philadelphia on Monday despite mustering only 13 shots on goal.
But Cammalleri deflected all accolades towards Halak, who improved to 6-4-0 on the season.
''He was the reason we won the game tonight, for sure,'' Cammalleri said. ''He was solid from the start. We needed him right away.''
Special teams also played a big role for the Canadiens, as they killed off all seven power plays by Ottawa, which had won its previous five home games.
''I thought that everybody that played on specialty teams did an outstanding job,'' Canadiens coach Jacques Martin said.
Halak made one big save after another in the first before Cammalleri broke a scoreless tie late in the period when he took a pass from Plekanec and beat Brian Elliott at 18:32 for his 17th goal of the season and fifth in three games. Ottawa outshot Montreal 13-5 in the opening period.
''They came out hard and they were shooting,'' Halak said. ''That's when I got in the game.''
Ottawa tied the game quickly in the second period when Mike Fisher got one past Halak at 1:46, but Bergeron restored Montreal's lead 10:01 later with a blast from the point for a power-play tally.
The Senators barraged Halak with plenty of rubber in the third period -- they outshot the Habs by a 15-8 margin, but Kostitsyn put the game out of reach when he scored on the power play with 2:12 remaining. Gomez iced the victory by hitting the empty net with 1:05 to play.
''We got a lot of pucks at the net but just didn't do a good enough job of getting pucks in the net,'' Senators center Jason Spezza said.
Canadiens right wing Ryan White played four shifts for a total of 3:13 in the first before he was removed from the game because he was ineligible. Montreal recalled White from Hamilton of the AHL earlier in the day, but neglected to inform the NHL about the roster move.
''I was informed that he was ineligible to play, so we just continued with 11 forwards,'' Martin said.
Material from wire services was used in this report
