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St. Louis helps Lightning snap nine-game skid

Dec 12, 2008 - 4:36 AM MONTREAL (Ticker) -- Martin St. Louis scored twice as the Tampa Bay Lightning snapped a nine-game winless streak with a 3-1 triumph over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday.

Captain Vincent Lecavalier recorded a goal and an assist and defenseman Lukas Krajicek set up a pair of tallies for Tampa Bay, which entered the game 0-7-2 in its previous nine games and 1-7-4 since firing coach Barry Melrose on November 14.

"(St. Louis and Lecavalier) play hard every night. Marty was a warrior (and) Vinny played as hard as he could," Lightning interim coach Rick Tocchet said.

"Our 5-on-5 play in the last month has been a lot better. The specialty teams and the shootouts have kind of cost us, but 5-on-5 play, this team has been good this year - especially this month."

Olaf Kolzig turned aside 32 shots for the Lightning, who won for the first time since posting a 4-1 victory over the Nashville Predators on November 21.

"All we've done is stop a losing streak and give ourselves a little bit of confidence, but we have to go on Saturday (at Ottawa) with the exact same effort," Kolzig said.

"Lots of times we've come here in a desperate situation, and today was another one of those," St. Louis said. "To get a win and leave the rink feeling good about ourselves, these are things we can build on and build some confidence, and build on that."

Defenseman Patrice Brisebois netted a power-play goal and Jaroslav Halak made 18 saves for Montreal, which fell to 4-1-1 on its seven-game homestand.

"We talked about not taking them lightly, but from our start, it looks like we came out and expected an easy game," Montreal's Tom Kostopoulos said. "They're a good team. They battled hard, they outworked us and outplayed us and they beat us."

"I just think we did not play our game," Canadiens center Maxim Lapierre added. "We can't win against the big teams and then come against the last-place team in the league like we did tonight."

After Brisebois opened the scoring at 5:34 of the first period, St. Louis leveled the contest just over five minutes later as his sharp-angle wrist shot from the left faceoff circle beat Halak.

Just 74 seconds afterward, Lecavalier gave Tampa Bay a lead it would not relinquish. After gathering the rebound of defenseman Andrej Meszaros' backhander, the former Maurice Richard Trophy winner tapped the puck into the net for his team-leading 12th goal of the season.

"We know (Lecavalier) likes coming here to play. He's from the area, and lots of people like coming back here and playing in front of this crowd," Kostopoulos said. "We know he's played well here before and we talked about that, but I guess we weren't ready for him."

St. Louis' shorthanded tally at 8:31 of the second period closed the scoring.

Krajicek swatted the puck out of his own zone, and St. Louis skated in on Halak and wristed the puck past the netminder for his 10th tally.

St. Louis' bid for the hat trick fell short as he was unable to connect from center ice on an empty-net chance with 36 seconds to play in the third period.