The Pittsburgh Penguins celebrated Lars Eller's 1,000th game with a huge overtime winner.

PITTSBURGH – With a final game before the bye week and the All-Star break, the Pittsburgh Penguins were once again looking claim two crucial standings points. After dropping their contest to the Florida Panthers in a shootout, the Penguins played host to the Montreal Canadiens.

It was the second half of a back-to-back, but the Penguins were hoping to be fueled by the energy brought by Lars Eller playing in his 1,000^th career game. Following a pregame ceremony, the puck was dropped, and the game was on.

First Period

This game started with a much slower tempo than that of 24 hours prior for the Penguins. The Penguins took an early lead in shots but couldn’t capitalize. They made changes to their power play units and got an early opportunity, but to no avail.

The Canadiens struck first over 15 minutes into the frame when defenseman Kaiden Guhle was left wide open in front of Tristan Jarry.

Despite carrying a lead in shots on goal, and coming up with a couple of good scoring chances, the Penguins entered the first intermissions down by a single goal.

Second Period

The Penguins kicked off the second period by getting a game-tying goal from Mr. 1,000 himself. Valtteri Puustinen fired a shot that was almost immediately blocked by Mike Matheson, and Eller cleaned up the loose change for his nineth of the season. Much like his first career game, Eller capitalized with a tally on a milestone night.

With the score tied, an unfortunate bounce off of Ryan Graves’ leg gave the Canadiens the lead again. The Canadiens were setting up their power play when a pass from Juraj Slafkovsky careened off Graves and into the yawning cage.

A late power play opportunity for the Penguins came up with nothing allowing the Canadiens to again carry a lead into intermission.

Third Period

Back by a goal entering the final frame, the Penguins needed to find a way to beat Jake Allen. They were getting great chances, but the Canadiens netminder kept them from converting.

Just past the halfway mark of the period, it took some real magic from Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel to crawl back to a tie game. On the back of a great shift from the Penguins top line, Crosby let go a nifty spinning pass that found it's way to Guentzel who tapped home the feed.

With a tie game and time winding down, both teams were looking for a late tally to avoid overtime. Neither team could find the back of the net and for the second straight night, the Penguins were heading to the extra frame.

Overtime

The last time these two teams met in mid-December, they went past the overtime period deep into an epic 12-round shootout.

There wasn't much pace from either team through the first half of the five-minute frame but a perfectly placed shot from an unlikely Marcus Pettersson sealed the win for the Penguins.

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