Bruins turn back rally, hand Canadiens fourth straight loss

MONTREAL-- John Moore scored a power-play goal with 2:57 remaining in the third period to give the Boston Bruins a 3-2 win against the Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre on Saturday.

Moore scored his first goal for Boston with a wrist shot over Carey Price 2:24 after Jonathan Drouin was given a double-minor for high-sticking David Backes.
"I'm not going to confuse myself with a goal-scorer, but the opportunity to help our team win in regulation, that's something I'm proud of," Moore said. "And we should be proud as a group. We had 20 guys contributing tonight and it was a really gritty win."
WATCH: [All Bruins vs. Canadiens highlights]
Backes and Jake DeBrusk scored 1:41 apart in the first period, and Tuukka Rask made 31 saves for Boston (13-6-4), which has a five-game point streak (3-0-2).
Drouin and Tomas Tatar scored in the third period, and Price made 32 saves for Montreal (11-8-5), which has lost four straight (0-2-2).

"I thought our team didn't play a bad game," Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. "It was a real up-and-down kind of game, physical, grinding. I like the way we just stuck with it, even if we fell behind 2-0, we came back in the second, we didn't play a bad period. We had some chances and maybe could have used a bit of luck there. But we had chances, we came back and we tied the game up, we got momentum.
"There's a lot of good things to talk about tonight, but it's really tarnished by the loss at the end of the day."
Backes scored his first goal of the season to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead at 13:01. He stripped the puck from Canadiens rookie forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi inside the blue line and then drove the slot and scored on a wrist shot for his second point in 18 games.

"I had a little primal scream when I got back to the bench just to finally get that out of me," Backes said. "It feels good to score, but I think the takeaway is that we had a good team win today and we had contributions from everybody."
DeBrusk made it 2-0 with his 10th goal on a pass from Torey Krug at 14:42. Krejci assisted on the goal for his 588th NHL point, moving past Peter McNab for 11th place on Boston's all-time list. Krejci got his second assist on Moore's goal to move one behind Cam Neely for 10th place.
Drouin made it 2-1 with his ninth goal at 6:46 of the third. Tatar tied it 2-2 with his 10th goal on a power play at 10:09.
"We knew we needed to keep just pushing and pushing," said Andrew Shaw, who got his 100th NHL assist on Tatar's goal. "We knew if we got one it was going to tighten up for them and it did. We got one, and then right away we come back on the power play and get another and we got right back in the game. And Price made some huge saves there to give us a chance."

They said it

"I've quit thinking. Thinking is paralysis sometimes when you're in slumps. So it was a quick play. I think that was good for me to just get it, look for a hole and shoot as hard as I could and give it a little prayer behind it to find the back of the net. And it was a beautiful sight in my mind to see the puck going into the net off my stick." -- Bruins forward David Backes
"We're trying to play hard, we're trying to compete, but obviously we've got to be disciplined. We definitely took too many penalties tonight (seven)." -- Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher

Need to know

DeBrusk has five goals in the past six games and nine points (seven goals, two assists) in the past 10. ... The Bruins are 4-0-1 in the second of back-to-back games. ... The Canadiens had lost consecutive games once, going 0-1-1 from Nov. 6-8. ... Krejci has 176 goals and 413 assists in 792 NHL games. … Moore had scored once since Jan. 1, on Feb. 13 for the New Jersey Devils against the Philadelphia Flyers (63 games).

What's next

Bruins: At the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday (7 p.m. ET; TVAS, TSN4, NESN, NHL.TV)
Canadiens: Host the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday (7:30 p.m. ET; TSN2, RDS, FS-CR, NHL.TV)