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Max Pacioretty finds scoring touch in win at Kings

LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 04: Max Pacioretty #67 of the Montreal Canadiens celebrates his power play goal with Alexander Radulov #47, Andrew Shaw #65, David Desharnais #51 and Jeff Petry #26 to tie the game 2-2 with the Los Angeles Kings during the second period at Staples Center on December 4, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens celebrates his power play goal with Alexander Radulov #47, Andrew Shaw, David Desharnais #51 and Jeff Petry #26 to tie the game 2-2 with the Los Angeles Kings during the second period at Staples Center on December 4, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)

LOS ANGLES – Montreal Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty felt his confidence start to surge early in his team’s 5-4 shootout victory over the Los Angeles Kings.

The sniper, who had scored just one goal in his previous seven games, took a feed from Andrei Markov and fired a shot past Kings goaltender Peter Budaj at the 2:20 mark of the first period to put his team up 1-0. After the puck went in Pacioretty started to feel more able to pump in another.

“I think any time in a game when you score an early one you’re going to be floating the rest of the game and just feel confident and you feel like the game comes easy,” Pacioretty said. “It’s just the way it goes for offensive guys. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing with, if you get one early you feel like you’re buzzing, so a couple of plays I would like to clean up personally but I feel pretty good about it.”

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Sunday was the first game the Canadiens had put Pacioretty on a line with Alex Galchenyuk and Alexander Radulov, the team’s top two leading scorers, and the trio delivered in a big way.

Pacioretty ripped another goal at the 5:12 mark of the second period as part of his first multi-goal game of the season. He also notched an assist on a Radulov goal. Both Radulov and Pacioretty combined for three of Montreal’s four goals and had six points total between them.

Montreal had also lost 14 straight road games against the Western Conference before Sunday and scored four goals in their three previous games on this road trip.

“He’s a leader for us and I thought tonight he had a really solid game,” coach Michel Therrien said after the game.

“(Radulov) and Pacioretty, they were really productive tonight and they had a really strong game,” Therrien added. “That was the first time we put all those three guys together. As a coach you’re always happy for the guys when they get results.”

Coming into the game, Pacioretty had struggled offensively. His five goals in 24 games merited a 0.21 per-game average – down from his 0.37 goals per-game last season and 0.46 the year before. He also entered the year amidst some turmoil with a rumor that coach Michel Therrien called him the “worst captain in Canadiens history” during the summer.

Pacioretty, who in his previous three years averaged 35.3 goals per-season, hadn’t been put on the team’s top scoring line in 2016-17. On Saturday, Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos said that other teams were watching Pacioretty’s situation with the Habs.

After the win over the Kings, Pacioretty acknowledged that he had been used in a different capacity this year, but his main goal was team success and the Habs currently have the best record in the NHL.

“Just worried about the team and the wins. Tonight I was on an offensive line and was put out there in situations to create offense and that was my role tonight,” Pacioretty said. “No matter what our role is with the team, we’re happy to go out there and do the job and that just happened to be, I guess, my role tonight.”

In their previous nine games the team had scored just 18 goals and in that stretch they had gone 3-5-1. Seeing Pacioretty put in his goals gave the rest of the Canadiens a boost, which led to a balanced effort up and down the lineup in the win over the Kings.

“He’s our best goal scorer,” Montreal forward Paul Byron said. “When guys like that get a couple and start feeling it they’re pretty dangerous out there. You can see from the first shift he was ready to play tonight. When guys like that are going it helps everybody else on that team for sure.”

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Galchenyuk, the team’s leading scorer, suffered a lower body injury late in Sunday’s game and any time missed could slow the boost they received from putting together the center with Pacioretty and Radulov. Therrien didn’t have an update but said he would have more information Monday. If Galchenyuk has to miss time, the team will certainly need a greater contribution from Pacioretty, which could make the timing of his slump-busting game even more important.

“I think (scoring goals) it gives everybody some confidence going forward for sure, scoring goals helps gets guys going,” Byron said. “At the same time we try to stick with what we do. At the beginning of the year we weren’t getting that many shots but goals were going in, so over time everything seems to balance out that way.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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