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Monday, Dec. 20 7:30pm ET
Brooks' Pens suddenly struggling again | |||||
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BOX SCORE
MONTREAL (AP) -- While Karl Dykhuis celebrated a three-point night, most of the talk was about his defensive work against Jaromir Jagr. Dykhuis had a goal and two assists and was on the ice whenever Jagr left the bench as the Montreal Canadiens downed the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-1 Monday night. "I've played a lot against Jagr in my career," Dykhuis said. "I think the coaches like to match up my skating ability against him. You've got to stay as close as possible to him and not give him any room or he'll beat you." Jagr, well on his way to a third consecutive NHL scoring title, was held pointless for the first time in seven games as the Penguins lost their second straight after a four-game winning streak following the Dec. 9 appointment of coach Herb Brooks. The Canadiens used Dykhuis and defense partner Patrice Brisebois as well as veteran center Shayne Corson against Jagr who, despite not scoring, had four shots on goal and rang a puck off a post early in the third period. "You can't completely shut down a player like that," Montreal coach Alain Vigneault said. "He still had five quality scoring chances." Montreal scored more than four goals in a game for only the third time this season. The Canadiens scored only five goals in their previous four games. Jean-Sebastien Aubin, who had not surrendered more than two goals in any of his last nine starts, had a terrible game and was replaced for the third period by Peter Skudra. "Sometimes you're playing well and you see everything and sometimes you're not seeing anything and you're not playing well at all," Aubin said. "That fifth goal was a bad one. I think a peewee could have stopped that one. But that game is in the past now and that's all you can say." The fifth was from Corson with 8 seconds left in the second period, a 40-foot floater that sailed past Aubin. Benoit Brunet, Patrick Poulin and Scott Thornton put Montreal up 3-0 in the first period. Dykhuis and Corson scored around Darius Kasparaitis' first of the season in the second. "We were due for a game where the puck rolled for us and it happened tonight," said Brunet, who played only his 400th career game despite his 11 NHL seasons. "And Aubin wasn't the greatest tonight." On Nov. 10 in Pittsburgh, Montreal took a 4-1 lead into the third period and ended up losing 5-4. There was no Penguins comeback this time. "I think we learned from that game," Hackett said. "We knew we couldn't let up because they're such a talented team." | ALSO SEE NHL Scoreboard Pittsburgh Clubhouse Montreal Clubhouse Pittsburgh's Civic Arena renamed Mellon Arena
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Montreal 5 AUDIO/VIDEO   Benoit Brunet scores for the Canadiens.avi: 798 k RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1   | |||||