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MONTREAL - Ryan “Wrong Way” O’Byrne nearly scored on his own net - again.
As it turned out, that was about as close as it got to there being a puck behind Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jaroslav Halak as he put up his second shutout in as many nights and the Habs crept closer to a playoff spot.
The Canadiens 3-0 win over the Buffalo Sabres at the Bell Centre Saturday night allowed them to get four fingers around a post-season berth in the Eastern Conference.
It actually turned out to be a good night for O’Byrne after the Montreal defenceman’s first-period miscue, which saw him stickhandle towards the Montreal net, lose his footing and crash, along with the puck, into Halak, almost opening the scoring for the Sabres. The second goal of O’Byrne’s career a little later - his first in two years and 99 games - stood up as the winner.
The Habs also got a goal from rookie Tom Pyatt, a good little hustler, and Sergei Kostitsyn and now have 86 points and are in sixth place in the East, two clear of the Boston Bruins and four up on the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers, who each have a game in hand.
Halak, who had turned back 35 shots in shutting out the Flyers Friday night, stopped 29 Saturday night.
The Canadiens have three games left - on Long Island Tuesday, in Carolina Thursday and next Saturday night here against the Toronto Maple Leafs - and four points out of those three games will get them in the playoffs. Three might even be enough as the Flyers and the Rangers play each other their final two games of the season, good news for the Habs and the Bruins.
O’Byrne, who infamously scored on his own empty net during a delayed-penalty call in 2008, gave the Habs an early scare when he followed the coach’s credo and took the puck hard to the net before the game was five minutes old.
He was only in the clear after a video review was inconclusive. Seconds later, he took a roughing penalty.
“You know, I’ve done it all, guys. It happens,” said O’Byrne. “Now I have the ability to just put that stuff aside and just go play the game now. I think it was a bad skate sharpening there or something and I tripped a bit there. No harm, no foul. I put it behind me, got out there and kept going.”
He atoned with a wrister through traffic and between the pads of Buffalo goaltender Ryan Miller at the 12-minute mark. “It’s been a long time and it was nice to get that one and it held up as the game winner - that much better,” said O’Byrne.
The win was the first of the season by the Habs against the Sabres, who were 4-0-1 against the Canadiens going into Saturday night’s finale of their season series. It’s possible they could face the Sabres in the playoffs, so finding a way to beat them has to help the confidence, right?
“We’re not there yet, quite. We need to make sure we play as well as we did the last two games,” said Halak, who’s the first Canadiens goaltender to have back-to-back shutouts since Cristobal Huet in 2006. “Whoever we play in the playoffs, it doesn’t matter because it all starts from scratch.”
If the Canadiens can keep O’Byrne from getting quality chances in his own end, they just might be okay for a while.
At least Halak knows he likes to go low glove side now.
“For the next one,” said Halak, “I’ll be aware of that.”
chris.stevenson@sunmedia.ca