PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Montreal Canadiens scored five third-period goals and ended a lengthy road drought with a 6-3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday night.
Josh Anderson scored two empty-netters in the third period and Tyler Toffoli added another. Christian Dvorak and Artturi Lehkonen also scored in the final 20 minutes for the Canadiens, who snapped a seven-game road slide and a two-game losing streak.
Jonathan Drouin scored his third goal in the second period for Montreal, and Jake Allen stopped a season-high 47 shots.
Sidney Crosby scored a goal and had two assists for Pittsburgh, which saw its five-game winning streak end. Evan Rodrigues scored a power-play goal, and Jeff Carter also scored for Pittsburgh, which frantically tried to rally after falling behind 3-1 and 4-2 in the third period.
Casey DeSmith stopped 27 shots in just his fourth start of the season. He hadn't played since Nov. 13 at Ottawa.
Montreal’s only other road victory this season came Oct. 28 at San Jose.
Drouin opened the scoring with 4 1/2 minutes left in the second period. The puck skipped over Kris Letang’s stick at the offensive blue line and Drouin took it the other way for a breakaway, beating DeSmith with a backhander between the legs.
Rodrigues tied it at 1 with his power-play goal at 2:33 of the third period. Jake Guentzel continued a career-best nine-game point streak with a secondary assist; it's also the NHL’s longest active point streak.
Montreal regained the lead 32 seconds later as Dvorak beat DeSmith from the top of the crease.
Lehkonen gave the Canadiens a 3-1 lead at 6:16 of the third period when he whacked a loose rebound past DeSmith for his third goal in four games.
Carter scored for Pittsburgh with about 3 minutes left, but Anderson added his first of the Canadiens' three empty-net goals with under 2 minutes to go.
BACK TO BACK
It was the second game of a back-to-back for both teams. The Canadiens lost 4-1 at Buffalo, while Pittsburgh shut out the New York Islanders 1-0 in New York.
Montreal, which reached the Stanley Cup Final last season, is 6-15-2 after 23 games.
MISSING RUST
Penguins forward Bryan Rust missed Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury, which happened during Friday's warmups.
Penguins coach Mike Sullivan didn’t indicate whether Rust would join the team on its upcoming four-game road trip.
Rust, who has two goals and nine points in 12 games, missed seven games earlier this season with a lower-body injury. He was third on the team last season with 22 goals.
A QUICK NOTE
Pittsburgh had allowed only two goals during its five-game win streak.
MELLANBY RESIGNS
The Canadiens announced during the game that assistant general manager Scott Mellanby resigned. He was promoted to that role during the summer of 2014, after having initially joined the Canadiens as director of player personnel in May 2012. The team said in a statement it would “not comment further.”
UP NEXT
Canadiens: Host Vancouver on Monday.
Penguins: Begin a week-long, four-game road trip to western Canada on Monday in Calgary.
