Carey Price got his second shutout and Andrei Kostitsyn scored twice to lead the Montreal Canadiens to a 5-0 win over the Boston Bruins on Monday in the deciding game of their first-round playoff series.
Price stopped 25 shots overall, including 11 shots in the opening period. He got his first playoff shutout in a 1-0 win in Game 4.
Mike Komisarek opened the scoring 3:31 in amid one of the first of countless roars from the raucous Bell Center crowd over the course of the evening.
PHOTO: AFP
The Canadiens took control of the game in the second, outshooting the Bruins 17-6 while building a three-goal lead on a superb goal by Mark Streit midway through the period and Kostitsyn’s second goal of the series at 15:13.
Kostitsyn punctuated the win with his second of the game, a power-play goal with 2:02 remaining in the third. Sergei Kostitsyn scored with 7.3 seconds remaining.
Top-seeded Montreal will face Philadelphia in the second round, if the Flyers win their Eastern Conference quarter-final against Washington.
Otherwise, the Canadiens will face the New York Rangers.
Tim Thomas stopped 30 shots for Boston, which fell short in its bid to overcome both 2-0 and 3-1 series deficits for the first time in team history.
Capitals 4, Flyers 2
At Philadelphia, held without a goal for four straight games, Alex Ovechkin scored twice in the third period to lift the Capitals to a win over Philadelphia and send the series back to Washington for a decisive Game 7.
The Capitals have rallied back from a 3-1 hole and had a chance to win only the second Game 7 in franchise history last night.
The other one should be painfully familiar to the Flyers faithful: Dale Hunter scored an overtime goal that led Washington past Philadelphia 20 years ago this month.
The Caps have a shot to advance on home ice thanks to Ovechkin’s timely goals.
They are trying to become the 21st team in league history to come back from a 3-1 deficit and win a best-of-seven series.
Ovechkin never seemed overly concerned that he hadn’t scored a goal since the Game 1 winner. The Flyers had stymied and frustrated the NHL’s leading scorer so much that he wasn’t much of a factor the last four games.
After the Caps erased a 2-0 deficit late in the second period, Ovechkin made the Flyers pay early in the third.
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
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