Montreal: Carey Price made 30 saves for his 33rd win of the season and the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Ottawa Senators 4-1 on Sunday night to sweep the home-and-home series.
Tomas Plekanec, Jordie Benn, Paul Byron and Nathan Beaulieu scored for the Canadiens, who lead the Atlantic Division by four points over the Senators, who still have one game in hand.
Tom Pyatt scored a first-period goal for the Senators. Craig Anderson stopped 33 shots.
The Canadiens also beat the Senators in Ottawa on Saturday, winning 4-3 in a shootout. Price made 28 saves in that game, while Anderson stopped 29 shots in defeat.
With Montreal leading 2-1 in the third period Sunday, Byron made it a two-goal lead for the Canadiens when he went five-hole on Anderson at 3:30, opting to shoot while on a 2-on-1 with Plekanec.
The goal was Byron’s 20th of the season. He also added an assist on Montreal’s first goal of the game.
Beaulieu made in 4-1, on the power play, scoring with a slap shot from the blue line with Anderson screened by Artturi Lekhonen at 5:08.
Montreal are now 8-4-2 in the second game of a back-to-back. The Senators are 6-4-1.
Sunday’s game had big play-off implications, and the energy on the ice and atmosphere in the stands were definitely playoff-like. Montreal came out flying, only needing 28 seconds to get the sell-out crowd off its feet.
Plekanec scored his first goal since January 24 when Andrei Markov’s shot from the point bounced off Anderson’s chest and fell right to the veteran centre in the crease for his eighth of the season.
The lead was short-lived as Pyatt scored the equaliser at 4:36 of the first when his shot from close range deflected off Benn’s stick and skipped over Price’s outstretched pad.
Benn made up for the mistake later in the same period when his shot from the point deflected off Viktor Stalberg’s stick to beat Anderson glove side at 17:45.
