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Brind'Amour scores 400th career goal in Carolina win

Feb 18, 2007 - 4:33 AM MONTREAL (Ticker) -- Captain Rod Brind'Amour's latest career milestone became even sweeter with his team's victory.

Brind'Amour scored twice to reach 400 career goals and Chad LaRose added his second shorthanded tally of the season to lead the Carolina Hurricanes to a 5-3 triumph over the Montreal Canadiens.

Eight months after leading the Hurricanes to the Stanley Cup championship, the 36-year-old Brind'Amour played his 1,200th career game November 1 and registered his 1,000th point three days later.

The reigning Selke Trophy winner recorded his second multi-goal game of the campaign to help Carolina win for the fourth time in six contests overall and seventh in a row here, including three in last season's Eastern Conference quarterfinals.

"We've got to win every game just to keep going, and we know we're going to be in a dogfight all the way to the end," said Brind'Amour, whose team remained two points behind Tampa Bay for sixth place in the conference. "That's what happens when you don't win your games early on in the year."

Brind'Amour's first goal of the night came on a power play just 78 seconds into the second period, when he stuffed the rebound of Erik Cole's shot inside the left goalpost to forge a 1-1 tie.

With 10 seconds left in the middle session, Brind'Amour snapped a 2-2 deadlock with the milestone tally, lifting the puck from the doorstep over sprawled goaltender David Aebischer.

"You think, 'Oh well, it's not a big deal,'" Brind'Amour said. "But it's kind of like all the other (special goals)."

"That's a lot of goals," Hurricanes center Eric Staal said. "I hope one day to get that many. He's a great player. He stepped up big on the power play. We needed those goals. That was a big one for the team."

LaRose netted his third goal of the season in the second period, Cole scored his 25th in the third and Cam Ward made a season-high 42 saves for Carolina.

"You look at the first period and it looked like they had a plan to throw everything at the net," Ward said. "There were a lot of shots from the corners or the wall and they were looking to create some traffic, but we did a good job getting to the rebounds first and trying to clear them as best we could."

"I think Cam was pretty sharp all night, especially in the first because as a team, we didn't do well in front of him," Carolina coach Peter Laviolette said. "There were too many odd-man rushes and we weren't tough enough in front of our net."

Tomas Plekanec scored on a penalty shot in the final minute and Aebischer stopped 27 shots for the Canadiens, who have lost six consecutive games.

"Six losses in a row, there's nothing there to be happy about," Montreal coach Guy Carbonneau said. "Everybody wants to win. Nobody wants to lose. They have pride. We realize we have to start somewhere and we just have to try to keep pushing."

"It seems for whatever reason, wherever we are, we play half a game or 40 minutes," Canadiens captain Saku Koivu said. "We have the focus and concentration, and then we seem to get away from doing the little things right towards the end of the game, and that's where we've been losing the games in the last little while."

Defenseman Sheldon Souray opened the scoring for Montreal with 2:24 left in the first period by reaching the 20-goal mark for the first time in his career.

"We had a good start," Carbonneau said. "We had the best first period we've probably had in two months. We skated the way we wanted to. We could have had a couple of more goals. That would have been nice, but they took advantage of their two power plays and we made a couple of mistakes on our power play."

"Confidence is a fickle thing," Canadiens right wing Mike Johnson said. "Things are rolling the wrong way right now and when we get (penalties) at crucial times ... they're not getting killed off and the teams are making good plays and it turns out to be the game."