Montreal Canadiens vs Vancouver Canucks Box Score on Mar 10, 2021

Jesperi Kotkaniemi collected one goal and one assist while Carey Price made 23 saves as the Montreal Canadians continued their mastery of the Vancouver Canucks with a 5-1 road win Wednesday night.

Tyler Toffoli collected a pair of assists for the Canadiens, who have a 5-0-2 record against the Canucks this season and have scored at least five goals in six of those games. Montreal boasts a 3-1-3 mark since coach Claude Julien was fired Feb. 24 and replaced by Dominique Ducharme.

Price, a British Columbia product who had a relatively easy night compared to his Vancouver counterpart, has a career 16-2-5 record against the Canucks.

Thatcher Demko stopped 40 shots for the Canucks, who were besieged from the drop of the puck en route to seeing their three-game winning streak snapped.

Montreal fired 15 of the game's first 18 shots before Kotkaniemi opened the scoring. After stripping the puck from Nate Schmidt, Toffoli fed a pass to Kotkaniemi in the left circle, and he scored his first goal in nine games at the 15:34 mark.

Corey Perry doubled the lead 2:09 into the second period. Paul Byron made the pass while leading a two-on-one rush, and Perry executed a perfect deke to net his fourth goal of the season.

Brock Boeser's team-leading 14th goal, a top-shelf one-timer from just beyond the left faceoff dot for the power-play tally at 4:54 of the middle frame, gave the Canucks life, but the Canadiens later pulled away.

Shea Weber restored Montreal's two-goal lead with a power-play goal, a blistering one-timer from the point with 5:49 remaining in the middle period. Weber's goal moved him into a tie with Mathieu Schneider for 15th on the NHL's all-time list for career goals by a defenseman (223).

Then, third-period goals by Jeff Petry -- who leads all NHL defensemen with 10 goals and became the first Canadiens defenseman in 83 years to need 25 or fewer games to score 10 goals to start a season-- and Phillip Danault rounded out the scoring for the Canadiens, who have a difficult turnaround when they play in Calgary on Thursday.

The win came at a cost for Montreal, however, as defenseman Ben Chiarot left the game due to an injury after a first-period fight with J.T. Miller.

--Field Level Media