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Bruins snap three-game slide, top Canadiens

Mar 4, 2007 - 5:48 AM BOSTON (Ticker) -- Compared to his last outing, Tim Thomas had a relatively easy night for the Boston Bruins.

Thomas made 31 saves and Petr Tenkrat and Brandon Bochenski scored in the second period as the Bruins snapped a three-game losing streak with a 3-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.

Making his 18th consecutive appearance on Saturday, Thomas faced 55 shots two days earlier in a 4-3 overtime loss to Philadelphia. It was the highest total of shots allowed by Boston since Detroit recorded 57 on March 18, 1965.

"We did not really focus too much on the last game because, what are you going to do about it?" Thomas said. "So it was more about, forget the Philly game and let's bring the effort that we brought in the Atlanta game (last Monday)."

Thomas raised his record to 28-20-4 by stopping seven shots in the first period, nine in the second and 15 in the third. He helped the Bruins (31-28-5) raise their record to 9-4-1 in their last 14 contests and climb within six points of the idle Carolina Hurricanes (33-27-7) for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

"You do not have a lot of games throughout the season like that," Bruins coach Dave Lewis said. "It's a special type of atmosphere, but we won the hockey game.

"We can't get too excited about that because we have to go into a difficult building in New Jersey (on Sunday) against a very sound and solid team and figure out how to beat them."

Thomas also prevented Montreal (33-29-6) from surpassing Carolina.

The Bruins opened the scoring 3 1/2 minutes into the second period, when Tenkrat's slap shot tipped off rookie goaltender Jaroslav Halak's glove for his seventh tally of the season.

"More ice time is helping me out," Tenkrat said. "It is getting me more comfortable on the ice and I feel better about myself, and after I scored the goal, for the rest of the game, I felt more comfortable and very confident."

Boston doubled the advantage with 63 seconds remaining in the middle session, as Bochenski's wrist shot from the left faceoff circle found the top left corner of the net.

"The puck got chipped up and I thought the (defenseman) thought he could get to it first and I just poked it by him," Bochenski said. "It ended up as a 2-on-1 and (Stanislav) Chistov drove the net there, so that opened it up for me and I looked over there, but I really did not have anything, and that pushed the goalie over just a bit."

"He's dangerous in the offensive zone," Lewis said of Bochenski. "He is a shooter who doesn't have one favorite spot. He goes for different ones. He (is) pretty creative."

After defenseman Sheldon Souray scored his 23rd goal for Montreal at 3:02 of the third period, Glen Murray netted his 28th with 4:09 remaining on a wrister from the high slot that beat Halak to the glove side.

"(Murray) gets a lot of opportunities and he made a great shot and Marc Savard made a great pass and, obviously, it worked out for us," said Bruins rookie Phil Kessel, who had two assists.

In just his sixth career outing, the 21-year-old Halak registered 33 saves for the Canadiens, who have lost three of five meetings this season against their "Original Six" rival.

"It seems like for a while now we always wait until we are down 2-0 or 3-0 before we start playing," Montreal coach Guy Carbonneau said. "In the second part of the game, we really played well (and) put some pressure on them. We were strong with the puck and we were able to come back ... then we make a mistake that we should not make at this time of the year."

"We definitely have enough time for us to win some games and get ourselves into the playoffs," Canadiens right wing Alexei Kovalev said. "But we need to start doing it now and find a way to score some goals 5-on-5 and be patient defensively and not give up too many odd-man rushes."