Caps captain Alex Ovechkin - held off the scoresheet for five straight games despite a spate of good scoring chances during that stretch - ended his drought and crept one goal closer to the 700-goal plateau when he scored the game's first goal at 7:29 of the first. Nicklas Backstrom won a left dot draw in Montreal ice, and Ovechkin collected the puck and beat Montreal goaltender Carey Price on the far side to stake the Caps to a 1-0 lead.
Braden Holtby's night was relatively quiet - at least in terms of shot volume - early on. But two of the first three stops he had to make were on breakaways, and he made them both. The Caps played well in spurts throughout the night, but those short stretches were muddied with long stretches of inconsistency against a Montreal team that lugged a five-game losing streak (0-4-1) into the building on Thursday.
"Obviously, we're giving up way too many breakaways," says Backstrom. "Luckily enough, Holtby bailed us out tonight in the first. I think it's not just positioning; it starts with managing the puck.
"We've got to be a little smarter with the puck; you've got to chip it in to one of our guys, not one of their guys. It starts there. We've just got to be a little smarter and obviously it will sort everything out on our breakaways."
Late in the first, Montreal squared the score on a Shea Weber drive through traffic from the right point. Weber's goal made it a 1-1 contest with 2:43 left in the first.
Ovechkin was boxed for cross-checking early in the second, and although the Canadiens didn't score on the ensuing power play, they did wrangle the game's momentum and keep it for themselves for a spell, holding the Caps to one shot on net - a 51-footer from defenseman Nick Jensen - over a span of just over 10 minutes from late in the first to midway through the second period.
In the back half of the middle frame, the Caps again showed signs of life, and they took the lead when their third line - their most consistent forward unit through this most inconsistent stretch of the season - manufactured the go-ahead goal with some diligent forechecking.
Carl Hagelin, Lars Eller and Richard Panik have been better and more consistent than either of Washington's top two units of late, and they were reunited after three games apart while Eller filled in for the injured Evgeny Kuznetsov on the recent road trip.
Hagelin, Eller and Panik did great work around the perimeter of the Montreal zone, maintaining possession as the Habs chased the puck along the side walls and into the corners. One could actually witness the trio anticipating the movement of the puck and each other throughout the shift.
Adroitly using his body to protect the puck, Eller took possession of a Hagelin feed and curled out from behind the Canadiens' cage. Just as he crossed the goal line to the net front, Eller was pokechecked, and the puck popped waist high into the air. Eller swatted it past Price to restore the Caps' cushion at 2-1 with just 2:57 left in the second.