NHL Playoffs: Canadiens on verge of sweep, and Golden Knights even series
Joel Armia scored two short-handed goals and added an assist to lead the Montreal Canadiens to a 5-1 home victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday and put them one game away from claiming their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series.
NHL Playoffs: Canadiens on verge of sweep
Corey Perry, Artturi Lehkonen and Nick Suzuki also scored in the win, while goaltender Carey Price made 26 saves for the Canadiens, who have a 3-0 lead on the Jets in the best-of-seven series. “It’s a different kind of confidence you get in the game when you know that you can trust the guy in the net,” Armia said afterwards. “I think he’s been unbelievable.”
Adam Lowry scored for the Jets, who are yet to lead at any point of this series.
Connor Hellebuyck stopped 28 shots.
The Canadiens will try to complete the sweep at home on tonight.
“I think it’s great for us right now, to be honest with you,” Jets captain Blake Wheeler said. “Having to sit in a hotel room all day tomorrow and stew on that one, you would have a lot of guys burning inside. … Hopefully we get a good feeling in our room and start to rebuild ourselves. We’ve got to win a hockey game, no different than it was today. We’ve got to win one game, and then we’ll see what happens.”
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Golden Knights even series
Jonathan Marchessault scored his first career playoff hat trick and Marc-Andre Fleury made 17 saves as the Vegas Golden Knights cruised to a 5-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche in the second round of the West Division playoffs on Sunday night in Las Vegas.
“That’s a big part of the last two games right now is controlling their top players and don’t let them come up with a lot of speed in the neutral zone,” Marchessault said. “When we do that, we can keep playing the right way. We just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
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Max Pacioretty and Patrick Brown also scored goals and William Karlsson had three assists for the Golden Knights, who evened the best-of-seven series, 2-2. Game 5 is Tuesday night in Denver.
It was the 87th career playoff victory for Fleury, most of any active NHL player, and moved him within one win of Billy Smith and Ed Belfour for fourth place on the all-time postseason career wins list.
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