by By RICH THOMPSON , The Boston Herald

Montreal scored the lone goal in the shootout on its first attempt. Following Blake Wheeler's miss, Michael Cammalleri skated in to beat goalie Tim Thomas high to the right side. Montreal goalie Carey Price then stopped Patrice Bergeron and Mark Recchi to secure the victory.

The Bruins narrowly avoided a dubious mark. Bergeron tipped home a Zdeno Chara rebound at 19:08 of the third period to tie the game at 1, ending a scoreless streak that lasted 192 minutes and six seconds.

The Bruins avoided being shut out for the third straight time, which would have equaled the club record set on Feb. 9, 1929.

The B's had chances to end the skid earlier in the third. Recchi set up Marco Sturm for an open shot at 5:20. Michael Ryder made a slick shift to set up Wheeler, but the ensuing shot was stopped by Price's extended pad at 9:20.

The Bruins were looking to rebound from consecutive shutout losses at New York (1-0) and Detroit (2-0). The Canadiens had dropped three of their last four, so it was essentially a game between teams looking to end a bad stretch.

But the nature of the rivalry had the Garden crowd buzzing as if both teams were playing for first place. B's coach Claude Julien expected an intense game but was cautious about expending too much emotion into any Boston-Montreal feud.

``Right now, I'd get excited with a win,'' said Julien after the morning skate. ``I'm certainly not going to put all my eggs in one basket and say this is what we need. We just need to win ourselves a Hockey game. We all know we haven't scored in two games so do we really want to focus on that (rivalry). We just need to go out there and play, and maybe take the focus off that.''

The Bruins caught a break at 1:41 of the first period in the aftermath of a 2-on-1 break. Paul Mara fired a bad angle shot from the left and became entangled in the crease in front of Thomas. Glen Metropolit collected the rebound behind the net and poked in a wraparound that was disallowed.

The game settled into an up and down affair. The Bruins were better at putting the puck (9 shots) on Price while Thomas was forced to contend with hard odd man rushes by the Canadiens.

The inevitable breakdown in the B's end occurred at 17:32 of the first. Ryan White gave Andrei Kostitsyn an open lane down the left side. B's defenseman Andrew Ference made a nice play to force Kostitsyn wide. Kostitsyn circled the net and slipped the puck to Metropolit on the doorstep. The ex- Bruin flipped home his third of the season to give the Habs a 1-0 lead after one.

Thomas and the penalty kill unit did a masterful job maintaining their one goal deficit. Chara followed Sturm to the box, giving the Canadiens a 5-on-3 for 50 seconds.

The Bruins drought appeared over during a four-on-four engagement late in the period. Bergeron poked in a Sturm rebound at 17:34. But the goal was disallowed because Sturm lifted the net off the ice.

- rthompson@bostonherald.com

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