Pittsburgh, PA (My Sportsbook) - Sergei Gonchar scored his first goal of the season 7:18 into the third period and the Pittsburgh Penguins held on to edge the Montreal Canadiens, 5-4, at Mellon Arena.

Gonchar was playing in only his third game this year after undergoing offseason shoulder surgery. It was Pittsburgh's first win under interim head coach Dan Bylsma, who replaced the fired Michel Therrien on February 15.

"It's a positive result, playing a certain way, playing aggressive," Bylsma said. "The win was more for the guys in that room than it is for me."

Evgeni Malkin added a goal and an assist, while Petr Sykora, Maxime Talbot and Miroslav Satan also lit the lamp for the Penguins, who rebounded after falling to the New York Islanders 3-2 in a shootout on Monday. Pittsburgh has split its last four games, but has at least a point in three of the contests.

Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 23-of-27 shots for the Penguins.

Tomas Plekanec led the Canadiens with a pair of goals and a helper, while Andrei Kostitsyn had a goal and two assists. Montreal has dropped seven of its last eight. Mathieu Schneider also had a marker for the visitors.

Carey Price continued to struggle turning away only 23-of-28 shots for Montreal. The netminder is 2-8-1 in 13 games since returning from a lower-body injury.

In the third period and the contest evened at 2-2, Pittsburgh caught the Canadiens in the middle of line change in the first minute of play and Malkin's low wrister on a pass from Sidney Crosby put the hosts in front.

Talbot's seventh goal of the season off a goal-mouth scramble three minutes in put the Pens up by a pair, but Kostitsyn answered 13 seconds later to get Montreal back to within one.

Plekanec's second of the contest briefly tied things 6 1/2 minutes into the third. However, Gonchar's blast from the middle point got through a maze of players and found the back of the net 47 seconds later.

"It was up-and-down hockey," Plekanec said of the final 20 minutes. "We made more mistakes than they did and that's why this happened."

Sykora opened the scoring 10:27 into the first stanza when he jumped on a rebound off a shot by Chris Minard and chipped it over the shoulder of Price from the left circle to give the Penguins the early edge.

Montreal briefly tied the contest at 6:22 of the second when Plekanec took a backhand pass from Kostitsyn and beat Fleury with a quick wrister.

However, the Pens answered with a goal of their own less than a minute later when Satan tipped home a Ryan Whitney blast from the right point to make it a 2-1 game.

Schneider's slap shot from the point with the Habs skating on a 5-on-3 man advantage tied things with 4:56 left in the middle stanza.

Game Notes

Pittsburgh plays at Philadelphia on Saturday, while Montreal hosts Ottawa...The Pens are 16-12-2 as the host this year and have won five of their last six games in the Steel City...The Canadiens have dropped 10 of 11 as the visitor and are 13-16-3 overall on the road...Despite the setback the Habs have won two of the three meetings with Pittsburgh this season.