Jonathan Drouin (two goals: penalty shot, power play), Thomas Plekanec, playing in his 1,000th career game, former Red Wings forward Tomas Tatar, Brendan Gallagher, Charles Hudon and Paul Byron scored for the Habs.
Montreal improved to 3-1-1 on the year while Detroit remains winless this season, dropping to 0-4-2.
Detroit's next opportunity to get a win will be Thursday night when it faces the Tampa Bay Lightning on the road.
1. Jimmy Howard: Howard deserved a better fate despite giving up five goals on 20 shots. He was relieved by Jonathan Bernier at 15:25 of the second period after Hudon's goal made it 5-1. The Red Wings made some mistakes in their own end, allowing the Canadiens to storm the net. Montreal was relentless, while Detroit turned the puck over multiple times.
Quotable: "We talked a lot about offense at the beginning of the year. We got to figure out how to defend better. We got to make sure we do a better job of making people go through us to get to our net." -- Wings coach Jeff Blashill
Quotable II: "I think everyone just has to look themselves in the mirror and see what they can do better out there. There's so many different instances on their goals, we're not playing through guys, we're not getting pucks deep, we're not blocking shots. Everyone's involved, myself included. We have to do it right to have a chance to win games. That can't happen. Just because you get a couple goals against you, you can't just fold up and pack it in. We're leaving our goalies out to dry, too. The goals are basically tap-ins." -- Gustav Nyquist
Quotable III: "We got to show some pride in here. Enough is enough. Bottom line, we just got to be better. Bottom line is we just got to go to work. We don't even give ourselves a chance right now. We hang our goalies out to dry, they got backdoor tap-ins left and right. It's tough to win hockey games like that. There's only one way to do it and that's do it right and everything starts with hard work. Right now, we're not working hard enough to create our own chances." -- Niklas Kronwall