NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Cole Caufield scored his 48th and 49th goals of the season, and the Montreal Canadiens won their seventh game in a row to move closer to making the playoffs by defeating the New York Rangers 3-2 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Caufield\u2019s second was his NHL-best 12th winning goal, putting the Canadiens ahead 47 seconds after Will Cuylle tied it. He moved one back of Colorado\u2019s Nathan MacKinnon for the league lead in goals and in the process extended his career high with 83 points. <\/p>\n
This winning streak is the storied organization\u2019s longest in nearly a decade, dating to an eight-game unbeaten run from Oct. 18-Nov. 2, 2016. Montreal has separated itself from the pack in the Eastern Conference and kept pace with Buffalo and Tampa Bay in a hot Atlantic Division race.<\/p>\n
Alex Newhook scored the Canadiens\u2019 first goal 4 1\/2 minutes into the second period on their 12th shot against Igor Shesterkin, who was the only reason they hadn\u2019t taken a lead earlier.<\/p>\n
Jacob Fowler made 21 saves, the biggest on a penalty kill late in the second when he turned aside Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re at the side of the net. Helped by his teammates controlling the puck for much of the night, the 21-year-old from South Florida improved to 8-5-2 in his first 15 NHL starts since getting called up in December.<\/p>\n
Despite 22 saves from Shesterkin and the goals by Cuylle and Adam Fox, New York lost for a 26th time in 38 home games. Captain J.T. Miller was honored with an award named for Hall of Famer Rod Gilbert, who played his entire 18-season professional career with the Rangers.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Canadiens: Visit the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night to wrap up their five-game trip.<\/p>\n
Rangers: Host the in-the-hunt Detroit Red Wings on Saturday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n
Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Cole Caufield scored his 48th and 49th goals of the season, and the Montreal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-578914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578914","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=578914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}