NEW YORK – As the scene shifted to Madison Square Garden, the Montreal Canadiens found themselves in what was essentially a must-win situation. Meanwhile, the Rangers were looking to ride the momentum of their home crowd to a 3-0 series lead.
Things got off to an interesting start. Just 1:45 into the opening period, amidst a scuffle, Rangers forward Dan Carcillo shoved an official. As a result, Carcillo was given a game misconduct and ejected from the game.
Later in the period, Carl Hagelin found himself on a 2-on-1 with Martin St. Louis. After St. Louis’ shot was saved and deflected into the air, Hagelin tapped in the rebound to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead, which they took into the first intermission.
Early in the second period, the Canadiens got on the board when defenseman Andre Markov fired a shot past Henrik Lunqvist to even the score at 1. Despite a lot of back and forth action, the score would remain 1-1 after two periods.
The Rangers started the third period on the power play, but were unable to capitalize on the man advantage. The score remained tied until the 16:58 mark when Canadiens forward Danny Briere threw the puck into the goal mouth and it deflected off of a Ranger’s skate and into the back of the net to give the Canadiens a 2-1 lead with just over three minutes left to play.
All signs pointed to a Montreal win until Rangers forward Chris Kreider tipped the puck into the goal mouth and off of the heel of a Canadiens player to tie the game at 2 with 28.1 seconds left.
Just as the Rangers appeared to have the momentum in overtime, Montreal’s Alex Galchenyuk was right on the doorstep and buried a rebound to give the Canadiens the 3-2 win just 1:12 into overtime.
With the Canadiens in need of a win, they relied on 24-year-old Dustin Tokarski, who made just his second career playoff start. Despite a couple of unlucky bounces that resulted in Ranger goals, Tokarski was stellar in goal. He held the Rangers to just two goals and finished the game with 35 saves on 37 shots. By comparison, Henrik Lundqvist finished with 22 saves on 25 shots.
With the win, the Canadiens head into Game 4 down 2-1 and looking to even the series heading back to Montreal. The two teams will meet again on Sunday night at 8 pm in Madison Square Garden (on NBC Sports Network).
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