MONTREAL -- These two points could be really valuable, of course.
Could make the difference in getting a favorable playoff seed, or home-ice advantage for the first round of postseason play.
And coming from behind -- on the road -- to beat a team that had spanked them at PPG Paints Arena less than a month ago surely should give the Penguins an infusion of confidence as they move deeper into a stretch of 11 games in 20 days.
But nothing about their 3-2 overtime victory against the Canadiens at the Bell Centre Saturday night, secured when Brandon Tanev knocked in a Teddy Blueger rebound at 1:49 of the extra period, might have as much of an impact on how the balance of their regular season plays out as Matt Murray's 26-save performance.
Especially if he can begin to replicate it on a regular basis.
Oh, he didn't reclaim his old niche as the Penguins' go-to goalie with his work against Montreal, but Murray did play at a level he hadn't reached in the previous few months. His positioning was good, his reflexes and instincts sharp, his confidence high.
He looked like he expected to stop everything the Canadiens threw at him, which might help to explain why he nearly did that.
And Murray made some of his best stops at pivotal points in the game. Like when he denied Artturi Lehkonen, who scored both Montreal goals, on a short-handed breakaway in the middle of the third period ...
... and when he thwarted Lehkonen from the left side of the crease 12 seconds into overtime.
"I thought he was terrific," Mike Sullivan said. "He made some big stops. The breakaway (save) he made in the third period (on) was a huge save for us. Those are game-changing saves.
"I think Matt's game is trending the right way. I think his last couple of starts have been pretty solid. Tonight, I think was his best."
Murray deflected credit -- "The team did a good job, battling," he said -- but the guys who played in front of him were having none of it.
"He played great," Tanev said. "Matt's a phenomenal goaltender, and he was huge for us, making big saves down the stretch."
Mind you, Tanev and his linemates, Blueger and Zach Aston-Reese, had a pretty productive evening themselves.
Aston-Reese got a feed from Blueger before scoring the Penguins' first goal, and Blueger and Tanev teamed up on the game-winner:
For all of the reconfiguring of forward combinations Sullivan and his staff have done this season -- sometimes because of injuries, at other times because of ineffective play -- the Aston-Reese-Blueger-Tanev line has remained intact most of the time.
"They have a unique identity for this team," Sullivan said. "They get a lot of defensive-zone starts, they play a lot against the other team's top players. They check hard, and they have an offensive dimension to their game."
The offensive dimension to Tanev's game tends to surface in overtime; of his eight goals this season, two have been overtime winners.
"One of the reasons we like to use him (in overtime) is because of his speed," Sullivan said. "Both ways. Offensively, but also defensively. He can catch the attack going back the other way. ... His speed is definitely a factor when there are fewer people on the ice, like the overtime."
Sullivan was understandably pleased with what he got out of his third line against the Canadiens. He was, however, unhappy enough with the play of his No. 1 unit that he replaced Alex Galchenyuk with Dominik Kahun in the third period, grafting him onto the left side with Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust.
And it sounds as if that change has the potential to hold for a while.
"We just didn't think (Malkin's) line was getting consistent zone time," Sullivan said. "We didn't feel like they were the threats that we expect of them. So we tried Dom Kahun up there, and we really liked it when we made that switch."
While Sullivan again praised his team's intangibles, there were times when he probably was tempted to lose (or at least hide) the passports of a few of his players, like when Marcus Pettersson was guilty of a horrific giveaway that led to a quality scoring chance for the Canadiens in the second period.
Which happened not all that long after Kris Letang had turned the puck over to Lehkonen from the left-wing corner of the Penguins' end, triggering a sequence that ended with Lehkonen stuffing the puck past Murray on the short side to give Montreal a 2-1 lead.
"We had some big defensive breakdowns," Rust said.
Murray was charged with stopping the scoring chances those lapses produced, but declined to criticize his teammates for the flaws in their performance.
"That team pressures hard," he said. "You have to give credit to them. They came extremely hard."
And Montreal played well enough that, for the second game in a row, the Penguins never had a lead during regulation.
This time, though, they came up with a much more satisfying finish than the one in their 3-2 loss to San Jose Thursday.
"That's a grimy road win," Murray said. "And that's what we needed."
That, and a big-time performance from their goaltender.
• The Penguins finished the first half of the season with a 25-11-5 record and 166 man-games lost because of injuries and illness.
• Thomas Di Pauli, filling in for ailing forward Sam Lafferty, made his NHL debut, but wasn't exactly overworked. He logged just four minutes, 16 seconds of ice time, long enough to record one shot and two hits. He was on the ice for Montreal's second goal.
• Galchenyuk finished with one shot and one hit in nine minutes, 22 seconds of playing time. Sullivan reiterated that Galchenyuk's sub-par production "is not an effort issue," labeling it "an adjustment process." He added that, "we're trying to find a spot where we think he has a comfort level and we'll continue to work with him."
• The Penguins ended up with a 29-28 edge in faceoffs, with Jared McCann (9-2) doing most of the heavy lifting.
• McCann failed to score a goal for the 16th time in 17 games, despite tying Malkin and Patric Hornqvist for the team lead in shots with five.
• Rust got the goal that forced overtime ...
... but Canadiens goalie Carey Price robbed him on several other excellent opportunities. "He had a couple of big saves on me, a couple of, basically, breakaway saves," Rust said. "I have to give him credit. He's a really good goalie."
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Nick Bjugstad (core muscle surgery)
• Sidney Crosby (sports hernia surgery)
• Brian Dumoulin (ankle surgery)
• Jake Guentzel (shoulder surgery)
• Justin Schultz (unspecified lower-body)
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Alex Galchenyuk -- Evgeni Malkin -- Bryan Rust
Dominik Simon -- Jared McCann -- Patric Hornqvist
Zach Aston-Reese -- Teddy Blueger -- Brandon Tanev
Dominik Kahun -- Joseph Blandisi -- Thomas Di Pauli
Jack Johnson -- Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson -- John Marino
Juuso Riikola -- Chad Ruhwedel
And for Claude Julien's Canadiens:
Tomas Tatar -- Phillip Danault -- Nick Cousins
Artturi Lehkonen -- Max Domi -- Nick Suzuki
Ryan Poehling -- Jesperi Kotkaniemi -- Jordan Weal
Lukas Vejdemo -- Nate Thompson -- Dale Weise
Ben Chiarot -- Shea Weber
Victor Mete -- Jeff Petry
Marco Scandella -- Cale Fleury
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins were scheduled to fly home after the game and will face the Panthers Sunday at 5:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena.
THE COVERAGE
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