MONTREAL \u2014 Zachary Bolduc scored the winner with his first goal since Dec. 23, and the Montreal Canadiens edged the Columbus Blue Jackets 2-1 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Jayden Struble \u2014 with his first of the season \u2014 also scored and Jakub Dobes made 25 saves as Montreal (40-21-10) won its third consecutive game. Bolduc added an assist on Struble’s goal.<\/p>\n
Damon Severson replied for Columbus (38-23-11) and Jet Greaves stopped 18 shots.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets fell to 19-4-4 since Rick Bowness replaced Dean Evason as head coach Jan. 12. They’ve climbed from 28th overall to third in the Metropolitan Division.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens, meanwhile, sit third in the Atlantic Division with 11 games remaining.<\/p>\n
Bolduc ripped a shot into the top-left corner 4:36 into the third period to snap a 31-game goalless skid and give the Canadiens a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Struble ended a drought of his own when he opened the scoring at 9:54 in the first period. He snuck a wrist shot past Greaves short side for his first goal since Nov. 26, 2024. <\/p>\n
Two minutes later, Severson got Columbus on the board by beating Dobes blocker-side on a 2-on-1 after Canadiens defenceman Lane Hutson was caught up ice.<\/p>\n
Takeaways<\/p>\n
Canadiens: Dobes was on his game again after posting a career-high 41 saves in Tuesday\u2019s 5-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes. His play kept the score even after 20 minutes, despite Columbus dominating the shot count 13-6.<\/p>\n
Blue Jackets: Struggled to build momentum after a dominant start. Columbus had eight shots on goal before the game was only eight minutes old, yet only registered 13 in the second and third period combined.<\/p>\n
Key moment<\/p>\n
Mason Marchment barrelled down on a break with 2:12 remaining in the second period, only for Dobes to stretch out his left pad and deny the Blue Jackets forward\u2019s deke to the backhand. A chorus of \u201cDo-by!\u201d followed from the Bell Centre crowd.<\/p>\n
Key stat<\/p>\n
With an assist on Struble\u2019s goal, Hutson became the fourth defenceman in Canadiens history to register 70 points in a season \u2014 and the first since Chris Chelios in 1988-89. Larry Robinson and Guy Lapointe also reached the mark.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Canadiens: Visit the Nashville Predators on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Blue Jackets: Host the San Jose Sharks on Saturday.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Zachary Bolduc scored the winner with his first goal since Dec. 23, and the Montreal Canadiens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-563391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}