Penguins beat Canadiens, 3-2
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Penguins forward Pascal Dupuis celebrates with teammate Craig Adams after scoring the go-ahead goal against the Canadiens during the third period of a 3-2 win at the Bell Centre in Montreal last night. -
Penguins defensemen Kris Letang, left, Sergei Gonchar and forward Jordan Staal celebrate a goal by teammate Matt Cooke, not shown, during the second period. -
Penguins defenseman Sergei Gonchar, center, celebrates after scoring in the first period with teammates Sidney Crosby, right, and Pascal Dupuis. -
Penguins forward Sidney Crosby lunges for the puck during the third period. -
Canadiens defenseman Roman Hamrlik gets his stick up on Penguins forward Sidney Crosby during the second period. -
Canadiens forward Travis Moen slides in on Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury during the first period. -
Canadiens forward Matt D''Agostini, right, is congratulated by teammates Max Pacioretty, center, and Jaroslav Spacek after scoring during the second period. -
Canadiens goaltender Carey Price makes a save during the first period.
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MONTREAL -- Pascal Dupuis is not a particularly prolific goal-scorer.
Oh, he is good for 12 or 15 in a typical winter, which is a pretty fair contribution for a blue-collar player. Hardly enough, though, to inspire comparisons to, say, Alex Ovechkin or Mike Bossy.
So Dupuis isn't terribly picky about the ones he scores, and savors every last one. Some, however, are a little more special than others.
Like the one he got in the Penguins' 3-2 victory against Montreal at the Bell Centre last night.
Ringing up the eighth game-winner of his career would have been satisfying enough.
Doing it in his hometown -- Dupuis grew up in suburban Laval -- before a crowd that included a significant number of friends and family members, well, it doesn't get much better than that during the regular season.
"A game-winner in Montreal is special," Dupuis said. "Really special."
Special enough, in this instance, to pull the Penguins out of a 0-1-1 slump and raise their record to 21-10-1.
Dupuis broke a 2-2 tie at 13:21 of the third period, converting one of 41 shots the Penguins launched at Montreal goalie Carey Price.
Although Price was sensational for much of the game, Dupuis' shot was one he probably should have stopped. The puck appeared to be on edge when Dupuis shot it and actually might have sailed over the crossbar if it hadn't bounced of Price's glove and into the net.
"I think it was [going over the net], but ... when you shoot those rolling pucks, you never know where it's going," Dupuis said. "I just took a shot. I didn't know where it was going."
Dupuis' goal stood up as the game-winner when an apparent goal by Montreal's Scott Gomez 47 seconds later was waved off because referee Chris Lee had blown his whistle before the puck entered the net.
The Penguins won despite failing to score on five power plays, including three awarded during the first half of the final period.
Even so, several players suggested that momentum generated by their last chance with the man-advantage helped to make Dupuis' game-winner possible.
"Our last power play was our best power play," center Jordan Staal said. "We had the most shots, we were moving, creating lots of opportunities to score goals, and that's going to roll over to the next couple of shifts. And that's what happened."
Sergei Gonchar had put the Penguins up, 1-0, at 6:38 of the opening period, when he went to the net from the right point and took a backhanded feed from Bill Guerin, who was near the right corner, before beating Price.
That snapped a streak of six consecutive games in which the Penguins allowed the first goal.
The lead held up until 10:48 of the second, when Staal lost control of the puck to set up a Matt D'Agostini goal from near the top of the left circle. Staal appeared to be hooked before the puck got away from him, but he downplayed the significance of the hook.
"It was just a bad play by me," he said.
The Canadiens hadn't posed much of an offensive threat to that point, but that changed as soon as D'Agostini's shot got by goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.
"We felt like we weren't giving them a whole lot," Penguins center Sidney Crosby said. "But anytime a team scores, they get momentum off it, even if they weren't generating a lot before that."
D'Agostini's goal invigorated the crowd of 21,273, as well as the Canadiens.
"This building really gets lit up when they score a big goal like that," Staal said. "Especially here."
And things didn't settle down any when Roman Hamrlik scored from the top of the left circle during a power play at 13:38 to put Montreal in front, 2-1.
But Matt Cooke short-circuited Montreal's surge at 17:45, as he deflected in a Gonchar shot from the high slot for his sixth of the season.
That restored the Penguins' equilibrium, and they controlled play for most of the final 20 minutes.
"We got back to things in the third," Crosby said, "and generated a lot more chances."
Some of those came during their three power plays, but the one that became the difference came off a rather harmless-looking sequence that gave Dupuis a memory that will last a long time.
"It's always special anywhere in the league, a game-winner," he said. "Why not at home?"
First Published December 11, 2009 12:00 am
