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Montreal, QC (SportsNetwork.com) - Alex Galchenyuk posted his first career hat trick to lead the Montreal Canadiens to a 4-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday. Brandon Prust also scored and Max Pacioretty supplied three assists for the Canadiens, who won their third straight game. Carey Price made 25 saves in the win. It feels great. My linemates made it easy for me. I had a lot of fun out there tonight, Galchenyuk said. We had good chemistry tonight. Victor Rask supplied Carolinas lone goal and Cam Ward gave up all four goals on 29 shots in his teams sixth straight loss. You have to believe that you are going to score, Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters said. We have to quit dropping the stick as tight as we are and shoot to score when you go to the net. Early on, David Desharnais took a cross-ice feed from Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau and skated down the left side to below the goal line, dragging Ward out of position. Prust received a pass from Desharnais and buried the puck into a wide-open net to open the scoring 9:15 into the contest. Galchenyuk increased Montreals lead with a wrister from the right circle off a tic-tac-toe passing play at 8:33 of the second. After an errant pass from a Canadiens defender, Jeff Skinner skated behind the net and wristed a shot from the right circle. Price made the stop, but did not know where it was. Rask barreled through the crease and chopped it past the goal line for a 2-1 game 6:47 into the final stanza. Galchenyuk put the game away with two late goals separated by just 1:09. He broke into the Carolina zone on a breakaway and beat Ward blocker side at 16:41. Pacioretty tracked down a loose puck at the left circle and slid a pass to Galchenyuk, who completed the hat trick with a quick wrister to account for the final score with 2:10 to play. Game Notes The Canadiens are 12-0-0 when scoring first this season ... Montreal is 8-1-2 in its last 11 games against Carolina ... Skinner registered his 200th career point ... Carolina forward Justin Shugg made his NHL debut after being recalled from Charlotte (AHL) on Monday ... The season series resume on Dec. 29 in Carolina. Cheap Adidas Coyotes Jerseys . The Marlies centre set up three goals, including the game-winner, as Toronto cruised to a 4-1 victory over the Oklahoma City Barons in American Hockey League action. Wholesale Coyotes Jerseys .com) - The Atlanta Hawks have stepped up to every challenge during their 14-game winning streak and will face another daunting task Friday with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder in town. http://www.cheapcoyotesjerseys.com/ . Tyutin has missed the last nine games with an ankle injury which occurred while playing for Russia at the Olympics. The top-two defenceman has four goals and 20 assists, 30 penalty minutes and a plus-6 rating in 53 games with Columbus this season. Cheap Coyotes Jerseys Authentic . According to bodog.ca, Cleveland moved up to grab the best odds to win the Larry OBrian trophy at 4-1 on Friday. By comparison, the Miami Heats odds plummeted from 3-1 favourites before LeBron left, to 50-1. Cheap Coyotes Jerseys . The seventh-ranked Berdych wants to focus on the ATP Tour after helping the Czechs beat the Netherlands in the first round. Seeking their third straight Davis Cup title, the Czechs will rely again on veteran Radek Stepanek.Way back at the start of the season, amid all the whistles and fouls, the defensive-minded teams appeared to be in trouble, a seemingly dying breed hamstrung by the NCAAs new hands-free rules. As the season progressed, the top coaches and teams adjusted to the changes and found ways around the impediments. Now, after the all increases in scoring and shooting percentages and offensive flow, the season has come down to a Final Four of teams held together by one common thread: shutdown defences. "In general, its like most sports: Defence wins championships," said Bill Frieder, a longtime coach and TV/radio analyst. "You still need to score, but basically when it gets right down to it, you have to make stops. The teams that can make a stop or two back to back are the teams that advance." The Final Four teams in this wild ride of an NCAA tournament earned a trip to North Texas this weekend because they can do just that. Florida is the best defensive team in the country, allowing just 88.5 points per 100 possessions, according to the analytics of KenPom.com. The Gators can be downright dominating on the defensive end, swarming ballhandlers and luring shooters into a fall sense of security before rising up to swat shots back in their faces. Defence has been a cornerstone for Bo Ryan since he won four national championships at Division III Wisconsin-Platteville and its been the calling card -- along with that ultra-patient offence -- since he arrived at Madison. The Badgers are fundamental and fierce, allowing about 56 points per game to NCAA opponents -- nearly eight less than before the tournament. For all the flash of Kentuckys fabulous freshmen, these young Cats can get after you on D. Kentuckys latest one-and-done lineup is filled with long, athletic players who can harass on the perimeter and guard the rim -- 10th nationally with 6.1 blocked shots per game -- like few teams in college basketball. And for all the hype heaped on Connecticuts Shabazz Napier, the Huskies are pretty husky when it comes to defence. Ryan Boatright has become a point-guard stopper -- he had four steals and helped limit Michigan States Keith Appling to two points in the East Regional final -- and UConn seems to have an entire roster of rim protectors, ranking 16th nationally with 5.8 blocked shots per game. "We are predators out there," UConn coach Kevin Ollie said. In most years, the high-scoring teams often get the attention, whether it was Florida Gulf Coasts Dunk City a year ago or backk to Houstons Phi Slamma Jamma of the early 1980s.dddddddddddd What usually happens at the finish? The best defensive teams end up with the hardware. Louisville rode its swarming, chaos-inducing defence to a title last season. The year before that, Anthony Davis and Kentuckys shot-swatting young Cats set an NCAA record with 335 blocked shots on their way to the national championship. In 2011: Connecticut 53, Butler 41. Great defensive teams litter the list of national champions throughout history, too. UNLV ran its wrecking crew through the bracket in 1990. North Carolina State and Georgetown let the air out of Phi Slamma Jamma in consecutive title games. Indiana played superb team defence during the last perfect season in 1976. Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton anchored the UCLA teams that ran off 10 titles in 12 years. Go all the way back to the 1950s and the San Francisco teams that won consecutive championships had a young Bill Russell dominating the middle before he went on to do the same thing for the Boston Celtics. "In the NBA, its always seems to come down to the teams that play the best defence and its no different in college basketball," Arizona State associate head coach Eric Musselman said. "At the end of the day, no matter how well you score, youve got to be able stop people." The Final Four teams have proven they can do it so far in the tournament. Wisconsin opened the NCAA tournament by holding American to 35 points and reached the Final Four by preventing Arizona from getting off a potential game-winning shot before the buzzer sounded in overtime. Kentucky held Kansas State to 49 points in its NCAA opener and held Michigan scoreless for nearly 4 1-2 minutes of a three-point Midwest Regional final win that sent the Wildcats to the Final Four for the third time in four seasons. UConn went toe-to-toe with one of the nations best defensive teams in the East Regional final, holding Michigan State to 39 per cent shooting and two field goals -- one at the buzzer after the game was decided -- over the final 5 minutes. Florida is the third team in NCAA tournament history to win four games by double digits and hold opponents under 70 points per game en route to the Final Four, limiting teams to an average of 55 points per game. "We just take so much pride into being able to disrupt the team and being able to lock down guys," Florida forward Patric Young said. So do the other three teams, a big reason why theyre all together in North Texas. ' ' '