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Thibault, Sabres blank Canadiens

Nov 25, 2007 - 4:29 AM MONTREAL (Ticker) -- Jocelyn Thibault apparently loves returning home.

Thibault recorded his first shutout of the season by stopping all 24 shots he faced while Jaroslav Spacek and Thomas Vanek scored goals to lift the Buffalo Sabres to a 3-0 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday.

A Montreal native, Thibault recorded his 38th career shutout by stopping nine shots in the first period, seven in the second and eight in the third period.

A first-round pick - 10th overall - in the 1993 draft, Thibault now has three shutout victories against the Canadiens in his career.

"It's always special when I get to play against Montreal, especially here," Thibault said. "I think the guys knew this was something special for me coming back home. They gave a great effort in front of me."

Buffalo now has a season-best four-game winning streak, with three of the wins coming at the expense of Montreal.

Spacek opened the scoring with a power-play goal at 9:38 of the second period.

Defenseman Brian Campbell fired a shot from along the blue line, catching a piece of Ales Kotalik in front of the net. The puck hit the right post and deflected back to Spacek, who one-timed the puck into the open net.

"It never gets easy (against Montreal), they're a pretty good team and they've gotten off to a good start," Campbell said.

"Right now, we're playing desperate hockey and we're playing the way we need to. We weren't at the start of the year and that cost us and put us in a hole ... and we're still trying to get out of that hole."

Vanek scored his sixth goal of the season to give the Sabres a 2-0 advantage just over four minutes later.

"That was just a bad effort all around, we didn't come to play," Christopher Higgins said. "Our decisions weren't what they needed to be. We weren't working the puck deep, there were a lot of turnovers, and we weren't backchecking.

"It was just a poor effort all around. We played pretty good hockey in the third, but the first two (periods) were just embarrassing."

Montreal Guy Carbonneau was visibly upset after his team's performance on Saturday.

"There are several players that have become too comfortable," Carbonneau said. "Either I have to change the way I speak to my players or I have to decide to change some players. "We don't have any 50- or 60-goal scorers or 100-point guys. We need guys that can scratch out goals. We need to work, tonight we simply didn't work."

Jochen Hecht added an empty-netter with 27 seconds left to ice the game.

"We can't keep going in this direction, we can't accept this," Montreal's Mike Komisarek said. "We've worked hard to put ourselves in the position we're in - good standing in our conference - but it's going to be very hard to stay there. We haven't accomplished anything yet."

Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff feels his team has turned a corner.

"We've played good hockey (this season) and didn't get rewarded," Ruff said. "From that point, we needed to play good hockey against some good teams and I felt that we've played some of our best against Ottawa and Montreal."

Cristobal Huet made 32 saves for Montreal.