Canucks score 3 in 2nd, defeat Canadiens

MONTREAL -- The Vancouver Canucks scored three goals in the second period in a 5-2 win against the Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre on Sunday.

Conor Garland had a goal and an assist, and Casey DeSmith made 30 saves for Vancouver (11-3-1), which is 9-1-1 in its past 11 games.

“Good teams come out after a loss and play well, and I thought we did that tonight,” DeSmith said. “I thought we defended hard and I think we’ve been doing that all year. And if we keep doing it, we’re a good team because we have a lot of guys who can score and put the puck in the net. So as long as we keep defending hard, we’re really tough to beat.”

Mike Matheson and Arber Xhekaj scored for Montreal (8-5-2), which had won its past two games. Jake Allen made 30 saves.

“It’s the NHL, you’ve got to be ready to go every night. There’s no excuses,” Canadiens forward Sean Monahan said. “You play an emotional game, a big game like we did yesterday (a 3-2 overtime win against the Boston Bruins), I mean, you’ve got to build off that. You’ve got to take that into the next night, and I don’t think we did that.”

Garland gave the Canucks a 1-0 lead at 6:15 of the second when he drove the slot and redirected J.T. Miller’s pass between Allen’s legs.

“I feel good about my game,” Garland said. “The team’s 11-3 now, so obviously, a lot of us are playing well. And our top guys are producing well, and our line, when we’ve got to chip in, we’ll chip in, and [we] feel good about our game as a line right now.”

Christian Dvorak appeared to score for the Canadiens at 7:56 of the second, but Vancouver challenged the play for offside, and the call was reversed after a video review.

Ilya Mikheyev then made it 2-0 at 9:17 with a wrist shot glove side on Allen, who had lost his stick behind the net.

Dakota Joshua pushed it to 3-0 at 17:57, scoring with a backhand off the rebound of Garland's shot during a scrum in front of the net.

“‘Dak’ has had so many chances this road trip, so just to see him get one was good,” Garland said.

Matheson cut the lead to 3-1 with a power-play goal at 6:46 of the third.

Brock Boeser responded for Vancouver with an empty-net goal to make it 4-1 at 18:30 of the third.

Arber Xhekaj again cut it to 4-2 with a wrist shot at 19:11, but Phillip Di Giuseppe scored another empty-net goal with 18 seconds remaining for the 5-2 final.

“The last three games or so, we were playing pretty well,” Dvorak said. “Tonight, I think the effort was there. I thought a little bit of the execution wasn’t, but I thought it was a pretty even game for the most part. They scored on their opportunities and we didn’t.”

NOTES: Vancouver defenseman Carson Soucy left the game at 4:00 of the second period with an undisclosed injury. There was no update after the game. … Canucks defenseman Filip Hronek has 13 assists during a 10-game point streak, which is tied with Doug Halward (1982-83) for the third-longest by a defenseman in Vancouver history.