Xhekaj made it 2-0 at 2:17 of the third period after he was able to tip Matheson’s wrist shot from the blue line twice. The first deflection went off Binnington before Xhekaj tipped it again once it got behind the Blues goalie. The play was reviewed for a high stick, and the goal was confirmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI (saw) \u2018Matty\u2019 made a fake, he was walking the line, kind of offensive boxed out the guy, and I got a stick on it,\u201d Xhekaj said. \u201cIt felt pretty good.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was stressing for sure on the bench (during the review). All the boys, I think, were stressing for me too. Jake (Evans) didn\u2019t know if he touched it or not after, so he was like, \u2018Ah, I\u2019d hate to be that guy.\u2019 I said, \u2018It\u2019s all right, if it\u2019s not, it will come in the future.\u2019 I wasn\u2019t too worried, but it was nice they counted it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fowler made 24 saves in the third period when Montreal was outshot 24-3, but the Blues couldn\u2019t solve him. They pulled Binnington for an extra attacker with seven minutes remaining and spent the majority of the remainder of the game with a 6-on-5 advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey put out the (Alex) Newhook line, they had their two best defensive defensemen, but that doesn\u2019t concern me,\u201d Blues coach Jim Montgomery said of pulling the goalie with so much time left. \u201cIt\u2019s the line they had out — I don\u2019t think it was their best defensive line — and I thought there was a lull in our offense, so I just wanted to give us urgency and I thought it did. It created a firestorm. We ended up with that line in the D-zone, they iced the puck four times.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually you\u2019re going to score when that happens, and we should have, but Fowler was too hard to beat tonight. \u2026 Fowler, he was incredible tonight. Several spectacular second saves. I didn\u2019t think we shot it in him. I thought he made the saves.\u201d<\/p>\n
NOTES: Fowler\u2019s 46 saves were the third most in a shutout in Canadiens history, behind Jacques Plante<\/a>\u00a0(52 saves) on Nov. 13, 1955, against the Chicago Blackhawks (2-0 win) and Sam Montembeault<\/a>\u00a0(48 saves) on Oct. 9, 2024, against the Toronto Maple Leafs (1-0 win). Fowler also set a Canadiens record for saves in a shutout by a rookie (since 1955-56 when shots on goal were officially tracked), besting Cayden Primeau<\/a>\u00a0(41 on March 12, 2024) and Tony Esposito<\/a>\u00a0(41 on Dec. 21, 1968). \u2026 The Blues were shut out in back-to-back games for the first time since Nov. 17 (4-0 against the San Jose Sharks) and Nov. 19, 2018 (2-0 against the Los Angeles Kings). \u2026 St. Louis\u2019 46 shots were the second most in a shutout loss in franchise history, behind 48 in a 1-0 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Jan. 25, 1986. \u2026 Blues forward Alexey Toropchenko<\/a>\u00a0had two shots on goal in 10:25 of ice time in his return after missing 10 games with a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xhekaj made it 2-0 at 2:17 of the third period after he was able to tip Matheson’s wrist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-949173","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\/949173","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=949173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}