HABS SEIZE MOMENTUM
Radulov stars in Game 3 win
CANADIENS 3 , RANGERS 1
The play went like this: While on a power play late in the second period, the Montreal Canadiens’ Tomas Plekanec won a faceoff cleanly back to Jeff Petry. The defenceman brought the puck to the middle of the ice before giving it back to Plekanec on the boards. Plekanec passed it low to Brendan Gallagher, who was to goalie Henrik Lundqvist’s right. Gallagher passed it to Artturi Lehkonen in the slot, and the rookie beat Lundqvist high to the glove side.
It was a thing of beauty, and it gave the Canadiens a 1-0 lead at 17:37 of the second period. They got third-period goals from Shea Weber on the power play and Alexander Radulov before the New York Rangers’ Brady Skjel scored with three minutes left.
The Canadiens won 3-1 to take a 2-1 lead in their Eastern Conference quarter-final series.
Game 4 is Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.
Lehkonen’s goal came on a play the line had practised five times during the morning skate.
But there was one big difference during the game — Lehkonen actually hit the net.
“He went zero for five,” Gallagher said about what happened during practice. “I told him to stop shooting and save it for the game, and it worked.”
It was Lehkonen’s first NHL playoff goal.
“I was just trying to hit the net,” he said. “We were just practising on it if it’s going to happen. It happened, so it’s good that we practised it.” Practice makes perfect, right? “No,” Lehkonen said with a smile. “I was missing the net most of the time.”
Gallagher said the Canadiens, who were zero for seven on the power play in the first two games of the series, were trying to find openings in the Rangers’ penalty kill. They found one, noticing the Rangers were paying a lot of attention to the off-side defencemen, especially when Weber’s big shot was on the ice.
That was opening up some space in the middle.
“You never know how it’s going to be … you never know if you’re even going to get a chance,” Gallagher said about the play. “But Pleks had some time and you could just see it developing.
“We scored that one,” Gallagher added.
“Obviously, they’re going to find adjustments and we got to find what comes open next.”
In other words, it’s back to the drawing board.
“You’re trying to find little keys, little areas, and that was an opening we thought we could take advantage of,” Gallagher said. “Obviously, they’re going to adjust. It’s a game of chess really, so we’ll have to find what opens up after that.”
I’m not sure if Lehkonen is a good chess player, but he’s well on his way to becoming a grandmaster in hockey. On and off the ice, the 21-year-old has a maturity well beyond his years.
“I think he’s just one of those people that has been through a lot in his young career,” Habs head coach Claude Julien said.
“When I say a lot I mean pressure games, whether it’s the world juniors (helping Finland win gold at the 2015 tournament) and all that stuff. He just seems to have that personality that not too much fazes him.
“He’s excited about playing. I’ve said that before: He’s a smart player, and he’s just reinforcing that statement I made about him by being what he is in the playoffs right now. He’s calm, he’s cool, he’s making good plays and he certainly is playing like a veteran again in the playoffs.”
Plekanec had a tough regular season with 10-18-28 totals, a 26-point drop from the previous year. But the 34-year-old has a goal and two assists in three playoff games and has played a role in Lehkonen’s development.
“He has been an incredible mentor, for sure,” Lehkonen said. “I look up to him a lot. He really shows me what it really takes to play in the league for many years — how he prepares his body, how he acts after different kind of results and stuff like that. He’s given me countless good pointers that I’ve really taken with me.”
When Gallagher met with the media at the team’s hotel on Saturday afternoon, he talked about how Julien establishing set forward lines has helped him and how much he enjoyed playing with Plekanec and Lehkonen.
“Having a role, having set linemates, for me it’s really helped my game,” Gallagher said Saturday. “We’ve been able to build on it game after game. We weren’t great in Game 1. We were able to sit down and talk about it and we came back with a pretty good effort in Game 2.”
It was even better in Game 3.