Arber Xhekaj had a busy night with a fight, an assist, and a +2 mark in 15:57.
Mike Matheson scored his first goal of the season to lift the Montreal Canadiens to a 5-1 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night at the Bell Centre.
It was appropriate on Shea Weber night that Matheson would break his season-long goalless drought with a one-timer on the power play.
Matheson, Cole Caufield and Joel Armia had two points apiece. Sam Montembeault made 25 saves for the win.
Nick Suzuki, Lucas Condotta, Jake Evans and Josh Anderson were the other goal scorers.
Last night also felt like a reawakening of sorts for Arber Xhekaj. He got into a fight with fellow heavyweight Mathieu Olivier, made a slick outlet pass on the Suzuki goal and was +2 in 15:57.
Xhekaj vs. Olivier was a far better tilt than Mike Tyson/Jake Paul on Friday night, so let’s cut right to it:
Back to the offence. Matheson channelled his inner Shea to give Montreal a 1-0 lead after the first period.
The Habs led 2-1 after 40 minutes. First up, recent waiver wire pickup Dante Fabbro beat Montembeault through a heap of traffic for Columbus’ only goal on the night.
A little while after Xhekaj got out of the box for his fighting major, he fed Armia in the neutral zone, who caught a streaking Suzuki entering the zone. The captain beat Daniil Tarasov to regain the lead for Montreal.
The Habs exploded for three goals in the latter half of the third period. Emil Heineman picked Columbus’ pocket and Condotta finished off the play to make it 3-1 for the home team.
Then from the corner, Caufield got his second helper of the night, giving him three on the season, when he found a streaking Evans driving the net. 4-1 Habs.
Finally, Anderson scored against his former club on a deflection. 5-1 Habs was how it ended.
In all, 10 Canadiens hit the scoresheet. Juraj Slafkovsky wasn’t one of them. He did slam his stick in frustration at one point over his inability to capitalize on offence. He remains stuck at one goal on the season.
Slafkovsky also found himself near the bottom of the team’s stat card for the night. Brendan Gallagher was buzzing all night, so it’s a little surprising to see him below Slaf.
Defenceman David Savard was expected to play, but was a late scratch with an upper-body injury. That meant both Jayden Struble and Justin Barron were in the lineup.
The Blue Jackets played the night before and the Canadiens accomplished their goal of picking up two points against a tired opponent. The Liveblog commenters had kind words for Weber and enjoyed the win on Saturday night, but they sure had opinions on the Xhekaj-Olivier fight. It was an entertaining one.
3. “A win is a win. Habs took advantage of a tired team in the last 10 minutes. They need more of that killer instinct in a close game. Second and third lines were really good tonight. Five goals and a heavyweight bout, doesn’t get much better than that on a Saturday night.” -Doug Kirkby
2. “With respect, no-one commenting here against Xhekaj has any combatives credential whatsoever. Olivier landed only one actual hit, and that landed entirely on Xhekaj’s helmet.. Xhekaj landed at least three full blows to Olivier’s head (I’ll have to rewatch it on replay to count). Xhekaj by unanimous decision. And I can tell you that with that win against Olivier, np-one in the league will want to fight him. He is clearly The Sheriff.” -Bradford Northern
1. ““Gotta get shots on the net” or so the play-by-play guy says. Traditional wisdom and I have echoed that many times. But I read something recently that talked about high quality vs. low quality chances and the interesting thing was not that teams that take more high quality chances tend to win, but rather that teams that take fewer low quality chances tend to win. I don’t mean fewer as a percentage. I mean fewer… period. They often lead to turnovers and the other team controlling the play and exiting the zone. So yeah, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, but some shouldn’t be taken at all.” -Michael Way