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Kovalev lifts Canadiens past Bruins

Apr 13, 2008 - 4:23 AM MONTREAL (Ticker) -- The Montreal Canadiens relied on their league-leading power play to settle Game Two of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.

With his team on the man advantage, Alexei Kovalev scored just 2 1/2 minutes into overtime to propel the top-seeded Canadiens to a 3-2 triumph over the eighth-seeded Bruins and a two-games-to-none series lead on Saturday.

"It's always great to get the first two wins at home, but we haven't really done anything," Kovalev said. "We got the wins at home and now they play at home, but if we get one of their home games, the pressure will be on them the most."

Defenseman Roman Hamrlik and rookie Sergei Kostitsyn also tallied and Carey Price finished with 37 saves for Montreal, which defeated its "Original Six" rival for the 13th consecutive time.

Peter Schaefer and David Krejci scored third-period goals and All-Star Tim Thomas made 28 saves for Boston, which hosts Game Three on Sunday night.

"It's disappointing to lose like that, but we have to take the positives out of it," Thomas said. "We had a huge effort from the whole team tonight. I thought we were going to come out of here with a win. We had some huge (penalty) kills at the end there and I thought we were going to get through that and win the game."

Fifty-nine seconds after Jeremy Reich was whistled for tripping in overtime, Kovalev blasted a shot from the left faceoff circle that sailed past Thomas and under the crossbar to end the game.

"I've been shooting from the outside and I had an opportunity early in the game and didn't take a shot," Kovalev said. "But this time, I thought I'm going to take it because I had a lane. It looked like Thomas, too, wasn't sure if I was going to shoot far side or short side and I think I caught him on that one."

"It was great," Price said. "I wanted to do a backflip, but my pads are too heavy."

For his part, Reich elected to focus on what the Bruins need to correct as opposed to the officiating.

"(All-Star defenseman Andrei) Markov was skating up the ice and I tried to get the puck off of him, and I don't know if I hit him or not. I guess the ref thought I did and called the penalty," Reich said. "Regardless of that, we took too many penalties, and that's the bottom line."

"We're a team that hasn't hidden behind anything this year, and we're not going to start now," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "We'll take the responsibility for our penalties and we'll move on. I guess the only thing that bothers me is the fact that (Reich) took a stick in the face, but because we decide not to embellish, it doesn't pay off. I guess you have to embellish to get a call."

Trailing, 2-0, after two periods, the Bruins got on the scoreboard as Schaefer gathered the rebound off a shot by Petteri Nokelainen and converted it nearly four minutes into the third.

Krejci scored on a 5-on-3 power play just 5 1/2 minutes later to level the contest at 2-2. The Czech accepted a feed on the doorstep from Marco Sturm and tapped it into the vacant net at 9:34 for his first career postseason goal.

"We need to bring the momentum from today's game, what we did in the third period, and get on with it," Krejci said.

Hamrlik opened the scoring with 90 seconds remaining in the opening period, receiving a pass from Bryan Smolinski and unleashing a blast from the left circle that beat Thomas.

Kostitsyn, who opened the scoring just 34 seconds into Game One, doubled the advantage just 1:50 into the second period. With the teams playing 4-on-4, Kostitsyn was able to beat Thomas from the doorstep for his second goal of the postseason.