Montreal — Tuesday night at the Bell Centre, the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-0 thanks to 41 saves from Cayden Primeau.
In the first six minutes, Montreal (25-30-10) scored goals through Brendan Gallagher, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Joshua Roy. They quickly took the lead and never looked back, ending a two-game losing streak.
With the effort, Primeau won his second career shutout.
Before being removed from the game, Elvis Merzlikins gave up three goals on four shots for Columbus (22–33–10). For the last 19 shots, Daniil Tarasov made all of the stops.
Within the first 21 seconds of the game, Montreal found the back of the net.
After finding himself by himself in front of the goal, Gallagher turned Jake Evans’ feed into the upper corner.
It only took the Canadiens three minutes to add another goal, this time during a power play.
Following a feed from Mike Matheson, Slafkovsky scored a one-timer past Merzlikins from the right faceoff dot.
Columbus responded by scoring 22 shots over that time, but Primeau was unmoved.
In addition, the 24-year-old Primeau, who is now officially Montreal’s backup goalkeeper after the team dealt Jake Allen to the New Jersey Devils on Friday, pulled off a stunning sprawling glove save to deny Alexandre Texier a certain goal.
His outstanding performance persisted in the second half as the Blue Jackets controlled possession time and shots, but they failed to register a point.
Columbus kept applying more pressure as the second and third periods came to a finish, but their efforts were in vain as they spent extended periods of time in the Montreal zone. The Blue Jacket also made three separate hits to the post.
