Canadiens-Rangers: Lang's Hat Trick Leads Habs

The "senior citizen" of the Montreal Canadiens scored his second career hat-trick as he lea his team past the New York Rangers en route to a 6-3 victory Wednesday night.

The Canadiens opened the scoring in the first period when rookie Max Pacioretty took advantage of a Henrik Lundqvist misplay to feed Alex Kovalev for his tenth goal of the season.

After Chris Drury tied it for the Rangers, Lundqvist again misplayed a long shot by Roman Hamrlik, giving up a juicy rebound to Guillaume Latendresse late in the period.

Ryan Callahan scored the lone second period goal for the Rangers.

But the Rangers played some undisciplined hockey in the third period, leading to their downfall, partly thanks to the Canadiens line of Latendresse, Maxim Lapierre and Tom Kostopoulos.

The trio—notably Lapierre—played a solid game, aggravating Scott Gomez and his teammates all night.

The struggling Canadiens power-play capitalized on the Rangers disciplinary mistakes, with Andrei Markov scoring just seconds into the Canadiens' second power-play at 2:32. 

Lang then scored on a two-man advantage less than two minutes later against the league's top penalty-killing team.

Michal Rozsival scored the third Ranger goal.

Lang, 38, then made a highlight-reel goal at 15:29, dangling the Ranger's Marc Staal out of his skates and putting a textbook wrist shot past Lundqvist.

He added a shorthanded, empty-net goal—his 15th of the season—to complete the hat-trick.

After coming off two shaky starts, Canadiens goaltender Jaroslav Halak stopped 36 of 39 Rangers shots, despite giving up several big rebounds, earning the game's third star.

Lundqvist stopped just 19 of the 25 Canadiens shots.

The Canadiens win snapped a four game losing streak at Madison Square Garden.