MONTREAL (AP) \u2014 Cole Caufield became the first Montreal player to score 50 goals in a season in more than three decades and Juraj Slafkovsky scored a tiebreaker with just over a minute remaining as the Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 in a fight-filled game Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Slafkovsky scored his 30th at 18:56 of the third period and Nick Suzuki had two assists to raise his season total to 70 for Montreal (47-22-10). Jakub Dobes made 17 saves for his seventh consecutive win.<\/p>\n
Darren Raddysh scored for Tampa Bay (48-25-6), which lost its third straight game. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 19 shots.<\/p>\n
Caufield beat Vasilevskiy with a wrist shot at 6:29 of the second period for the milestone goal in front of a frenzied crowd at the Bell Centre that included Prime Minister Mark Carney.<\/p>\n
Caufield became the seventh Canadiens player to hit the 50-goal mark, and the first since St\u00e9phane Richer in 1989-90.<\/p>\n
Raddysh tied the game with 1:51 remaining in the third period with the goalie pulled before Slafkovsky scored with 64 seconds left on a pass from Suzuki.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens, Lightning and Buffalo Sabres are locked in a three-way race for first place in the Atlantic Division with three regular-season games remaining for Montreal and Tampa Bay, and two left for Buffalo. Montreal moved two points ahead of Tampa Bay and two behind Buffalo for the division lead.<\/p>\n
The game featured several scrums after the whistle, a spirited fight between Montreal\u2019s Josh Anderson and Tampa Bay\u2019s Declan Carlile, and seven 10-minute misconducts \u2014 culminating in 126 penalty minutes. The second period alone had more than 100, with players packing in to both penalty boxes.<\/p>\n
Lightning: At the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Canadiens: Host the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL (AP) \u2014 Cole Caufield became the first Montreal player to score 50 goals in a season in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5105],"tags":[243,971,2580,10106,5,909,783,976,189,62395,2811,264,4,975,10617,3494,3492,47087,10616,3493,30962,540,92,5168,5167],"class_list":{"0":"post-549404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-lightning","8":"tag-andrei-vasilevskiy","9":"tag-cole-caufield","10":"tag-darren-raddysh","11":"tag-declan-carlile","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-jakub-dobes","14":"tag-josh-anderson","15":"tag-juraj-slafkovsky","16":"tag-lightning","17":"tag-lightning-canadiens-score","18":"tag-mark-carney","19":"tag-montreal","20":"tag-nhl","21":"tag-nick-suzuki","22":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","23":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","24":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","25":"tag-product-32550-ap-online-hockey-game-stories","26":"tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","27":"tag-product-40780-ap-florida-sports-only","28":"tag-stephane-richer","29":"tag-tampa-bay","30":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","31":"tag-tampabay","32":"tag-tampabaylightning"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}