Montreal Canadiens find scoring touch in win over Boston Bruins

P.K. Subban, Dale Weise and Lars Eller each had a goal and an assist, Carey Price made 26 saves, and the Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins 4-2 on Tuesday night to take the lead in their NHL Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series.

The Canadiens are up 2-1 with Game 4 set for Thursday in Montreal.

Tomas Plekanec also scored for the Canadiens, who were outplayed for long stretches but made the most of quick-strike attacks.

Patrice Bergeron and Andrej Meszaros scored for the Bruins, who outshot Montreal 28-26.

For the third straight game, the Canadiens held a 3-1 lead in the third period. This time, they didn’t let it completely slip away.

Tuukka Rask was pulled with 2:20 left to play, and only four seconds later, Meszaros beat Price with a high shot through traffic off a feed from Milan Lucic. But the Bruins failed to get the equalizer in the frantic final minute. Then Eller got loose to score into an empty net with three seconds to go.

The Bruins took control of the puck through the first 10 minutes of play. But Michael Bournival made a gritty play to get the puck around the boards to Subban, who left it for Thomas Vanek for a diagonal pass. That gave Plekanec a shot into an open side for his third of the playoffs at 10:57.

Subban was sent off for roughing after a high hit on Reilly Smith that also took out Vanek, sending the Austrian off the ice with an apparent right leg problem. He returned for the second period.

Eller sent Subban in on a breakaway when the Canadiens defenseman left the penalty box. He faked out Rask and scored on a low forehand shot at 14:44.

Mike Weaver blocked a shot that went to Daniel Briere, who sent Weise in on a breakaway with a pass up the middle. The fourth-line winger beat Rask between the pads at 13:52 of the second.

Bergeron won a face-off from Plekanec in the Montreal zone and reached across himself to deflect Torey Krug’s point shot past Price with 2:12 left in the middle period.

Subban has had two points in each game of the series.

Montreal coach Michel Therrien tweaked his lines, moving Vanek to the second unit with Plekanec and putting Brendan Gallagher on the top line.

Wild 4, Blackhawks 0: Erik Haula and Mikael Granlund scored goals less than 3 minutes apart early in the third period, and Minnesota recovered from a sluggish start for a victory over Chicago in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinal series.

Ilya Bryzgalov made 19 saves for his first shutout in the playoffs in eight years, and the Blackhawks had their lead whittled to 2-1 with their first loss in 2 1/2 weeks.

Zach Parise put the exclamation point on the win with a power-play goal, the first in 25 chances for the Wild over their last two playoff series against the Blackhawks. Then Granlund tacked on an empty-netter with 1:17 left.

Game 4 is Friday in Minnesota.

Corey Crawford stopped only 14 shots for the Blackhawks, who dropped their first two games to St. Louis in the last round before winning four in a row. Since losing to the Blues on April 19, they took the lead in all six games and outscored their opponents 23-9.