MONTREAL The Montreal Canadiens have been waiting for some offense from their second line. On this night, they came through.Max Pacioretty struck early in the third period, and Tomas Plekanec and Brendan Gallagher snapped point droughts with an assist each to lift the Canadiens to a 2-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Thanksgiving night at the Bell Centre.Gallagher recorded just his second point in 11 games and Plekanec put an end to an eight-game pointless streak. Pacioretty picked up his first goal and point in five games.Andrew Shaw also scored for Montreal (15-4-2).”It’s nice to have all four lines going and it’s important for us because there’s no egos in this room,” said Pacioretty. “We want each other to have success. I don’t think there’s any team that uses four lines like we do, and we want that balanced scoring. It’s important. When you get guys into the game like that, it gives them confidence. We want all four lines to have confidence and contribute.”Elias Lindholm connected for the Hurricanes (8-7-4), whose five-game winning streak was snapped.”We can be better,” Hurricanes coach Bill Peters said. “The power play can be better, we can be at the net, be harder at both nets theirs and ours. There’s some things we did well but some things you can improve on moving forward.”Carey Price stopped 30 shots while counterpart Cam Ward made 20 saves for Carolina (8-7-4).The win was the 390th of Canadiens head coach Michel Therrien’s career, moving him into a tie with Fred Shero for 36th all-time in the NHL.Lindholm, who snapped a 16-game goalless drought on Sunday, notched his second in the past three games to opening the scoring at 10:32 of the first period. The 21-year-old picked up a rolling pass from Victor Rask and once it settled, fired a shot from the top of the dot that beat Price over his shoulder. Lindholm has points in four straight.Shaw tied it with his fourth of the season just over a minute and a half later. Charles Hudon picked up David Desharnais’ pass along the right side and skated down low and behind the goal line before backhanding a perfect feed to a falling Shaw in front.”Davey made a great play, he read the support and kept it inside, chipped it to Hudy,” said Shaw, who’s scored two of his four goals against the Hurricanes. “Hudy had speed and I just drove the net. He happened to put it write on my tape. I know if I missed that one, I’d be pretty upset with myself.”The second period went without a goal but the Hurricanes put the effort out there to try to get the go-ahead goal, outshooting Montreal 8-5, and attempting 19 shots overall.”We didn’t really give them anything,” Jordan Staal said of the middle frame. “We played in their end the whole time and I thought we did a lot of good things.”Pacioretty put Montreal ahead just 14 seconds into the third period. Brendan Gallagher found Tomas Plekanec in the high slot, and the center spun around before taking a shot that hit the end boards and bounced out to Pacioretty at the left edge of the net, who tucked it in between Ward’s pad and the post.It was the Canadiens’ 20,800th goal in the franchise’s NHL history.”Two points are two points, and it’s a lot of fun to get kind of a greasy win,” Pacioretty said. “It wasn’t perfect. They play similar to us tight in the neutral zone, force you to try and make plays and capitalize on your mistakes. At first, they kind of baited us into it, but as the game went on we wore them down a bit and got a lucky break.”NOTES: Montreal made several changes to its lineup, with LW Charles Hudon and D Greg Pateryn drawing back in, while D Mark Barberio made his season debut after he was called up from the AHL’s St. John’s IceCaps on Wednesday. … Canadiens LW Daniel Carr was a healthy scratch and D Nathan Beaulieu missed the game after taking a puck to the throat in Tuesday’s game. … Carolina C Andrej Nestrasil was scratched for a sixth straight game while D Klas Dahlbeck sat out his fifth game in a row. … The game was the middle of a three-game Canadian swing for the Hurricanes, who won in Toronto on Tuesday and will visit Ottawa on Saturday.
