Canadiens score seven against Jets, earn two-game split

MONTREAL-- Brendan Gallagher had two goals and an assist for the Montreal Canadiens in a 7-1 win against the Winnipeg Jets at Bell Centre on Saturday.

Tyler Toffoli had a goal and an assist, and Tomas Tatar had three assists for Montreal (11-6-6), which split the two-game set and was 2-0-1 on its first homestand under coach Dominique Ducharme. Carey Price made 28 saves.
The Canadiens are 2-1-2 since coach Claude Julien was fired Feb. 24 and replaced by Ducharme, who said he was confident players were buying into his methods.
"I had no doubt about that," Ducharme said. "Every day they show up, they're engaged. I was really happy for them. They've put in so much, those guys care a lot. And to see them getting rewarded with a lot of success tonight. It won't be like that every night, but our players got rewarded tonight. I think it's good for them because they put in the work."
Mathieu Perreault scored for Winnipeg (15-8-1), which won 4-3 in overtime here Thursday.
"You've got to give them credit, they were a desperate team," Jets captain Blake Wheeler said. "They're trying to get on a roll here, and you know they made their opportunities count."
Connor Hellebuyck allowed four goals on 19 shots before being replaced in the second period by Laurent Brossoit, who made six saves.
"I felt great out there, I thought the guys were good in front of me," Hellebuyck said. "So they had a good night, hats off to them. They took it to us tonight."

Josh Anderson, who returned after missing three games with a lower-body injury, gave the Canadiens a 1-0 lead with his 10th goal at 15:29 of the first period.
Hellebuyck went behind the net to play Jesperi Kotkaniemi's shot around the boards, but the puck took an unusual bounce off a stanchion and went to Anderson in the slot for an uncontested goal.
"I know most Zamboni doors are not that smooth," Hellebuyck said. "The problem is an in-zone dump, and they had it for a couple seconds, and I wanted to try to break that up and help move the pace our way, and you don't see those happen in zone too often. Those are usually dumps from like the red line or the puck has time to start wobbling. You know, it's unfortunate that it went all the way into the slot right onto [Anderson's] tape."
Toffoli made it 2-0 with his 15th goal on a wrist shot off the crossbar at 7:03 of the second period. Gallagher extended the lead to 3-0 at 11:01 before making it 4-0 at 14:25, finishing a turnaround pass from Phillip Danault.

Joel Armia scored Montreal's fourth goal of the period at 16:05 to make it 5-0. Paul Byron scored at 4:20 of the third period to make it 6-0, and Jeff Petry shot through a screen at 8:20 to make it 7-0.
Perreault ended Price's shutout at 11:14 with a power-play goal for the 7-1 final.
"Our guys are just paying really good attention to the details of the game," Anderson said. "They've been bringing that every night, and tonight, maybe the first couple minutes of the game we were a little bit sloppy, but after that we started supporting each other on the ice, and things started going our way finally."
NOTES: Winnipeg had won four straight against Montreal, including three games this season. ... The Canadiens scored seven goals in a game for the second time this season (7-3 at the Vancouver Canucks on Jan. 21). The Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs are the other NHL teams with multiple seven-goal games. ... Anderson and Toffoli are the fourth set of Canadiens to be the first two players to score 10 goals in their first season with Montreal (Joe Malone and Newsy Lalonde in 1917-18; John Ferguson and Dave Balon in 1963-64; and Robert Lang and Alex Tanguay in 2008-09). ... Gallagher, who has scored 183 goals for Montreal, moved two ahead of Yvon Lambert for 29th in Canadiens history.