Audette Doesn’t Waste Chance

Donald Audette struggled for three periods to get a shot on goal and failed. It finally came less than three minutes into overtime and rocked Montreal’s Molson Centre.

Audette scored a team-leading fifth goal of the playoffs 2:26 into overtime Tuesday night, giving the Canadiens a 2-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes.

The winning goal came off a faceoff in the Carolina zone, and Hurricane ace Rod Brind’Amour was victimized on the draw. Yanic Perreault somehow got the puck to Audette, who beat goalie Kevin Weekes with a quick shot from the low slot.

“I don’t think he was ready for that one,” Audette said of Weekes, who finished with 18 saves. “I had a step on the defenseman and just took one step and it was enough. The puck stayed up in the air and I stepped into it. I think I beat him with the quickness of the shot.”

Brind’Amour, who won 16 of 22 faceoffs, was as stunned as anybody.

“It happens,” he said. “It went right up in the air behind me, and for a second everyone froze. It landed nice for him, and he got a good shot off. Those little things are frustrating. You do that 1,000 times and it wouldn’t happen like that.”

The Canadiens got another strong performance from Jose Theodore, who made 33 saves, and gained a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, which resumes Thursday at Montreal. It was Carolina’s first overtime loss after two victories over New Jersey in the first round.

“You gear yourself up for a seven-game series, and we expect it to be a hard-fought battle,” Carolina captain Ron Francis said. “We still feel capable of winning. We had a lot of chances. We just have to find a way to bury one.”

Saku Koivu, who leads Montreal in scoring with 10 points, got his fourth goal of the playoffs at 9:03 of the second period to break a scoreless duel between Theodore and Weekes.

St. Louis 6, Detroit 1--After stuffing the St. Louis Blues for two games, Dominik Hasek looked like an ordinary goaltender.

Keith Tkachuk had his first playoff hat trick and the Blues put a huge dent in Hasek’s aura of invincibility, beating the Red Wings at St. Louis.

“They were scoring goals, that was the difference,” Hasek said. “A lot of their shots went in. What can I say?”

The Blues cut their second-round series deficit to 2-1. They got 27 saves from Brent Johnson and will try to even the series Thursday night at St. Louis.

“Hey, we just were getting too many quality scoring chances to not cash in at some point,” Scott Mellanby said. “But Thursday’s going to be that much harder.

“They’ve got a lot of great players and Hasek’s going to bounce back.”

Red Wing Coach Scotty Bowman could remember only one worse playoff result in his career, an 8-0 loss against an opponent he couldn’t remember.

“It was a poor publicity score for sure,” Bowman said. “It’s a bad score. We’re not happy about it.”

Tkachuk, who led the Blues with 38 goals in the regular season, has four goals in the playoffs. He scored once in each period, putting deflections past Hasek in the first and second periods, then converting Pavol Demitra’s setup on a 3-on-2 break in the third.

The power play came to life for the Blues, who ended an 0-for-10 drought with two goals.