Salo looks to start early season rebound with sparkling performance in a win at Montreal.

Lineup
Smyth	Horcoff	Hemsky	Brewer	Cross
Torres	York	Dvorak	Smith	Staios
Moreau	Reasoner	Pisani	Bergeron	Ferguson
Torres	Sarno	Salmelainen
			Salo
			Conklin
Scratched: Semenmov and Chimera - healthy scratches. Laraque with a hand injury and Stoll with tonsilitis.

Postgame

4-2 read the final score and it was a night of many firsts for the Oilers. The first time they scored more than one goal in a road game in this young season. The first goal and point for newly promoted Peter Sarno. His goal was assisted by Tony Salmalainen who also earned his first point.

Perhaps the biggest first was that it was the only time this season, and thus the first, that the Oilers could say their goaltender stole them the game. With the Oilers payroll and how much is locked up in Salo, that will have to be the norm rather than the exception if this season is to see the Oilers remain over the .500 mark.

A trip to Montreal marked the beginning of what will be a six game in 10 days trip and with vists to Ottawa and then Toronto to face a crazed and desperate Leafs squadron, a win right off the hop would be decent medicine.

The Oilers had to kill a penalty early on off some over aggressive play from Brad Isbister and Salo made two of his many fine saves by first denying Juneau and then Perreault. The Oilers would finally click with their road powerplay when Raffi Torres collected the garbage off a deft Marty Reasoner tip from a Steve Staios point shot.

Fernando Pisani made it 2-0 before the period was over as he slammed home a very loose rebound.

The second period was very none descript except for a 59 second flurry of action which wrought three goals and a fiery and expletive laced timeout from Habs bench general, Claude Juilen.

Cross made it 3-0 early in the frame when he snapped a shot far side on Mathieu Garon. The Oilers increased their lead to four goals just 22 seconds later when Peter Sarno collected the rebound off a Isbister scoring chance and he shovelled home the disc.

Julien then called for the whistle and let the Habs have it and the television cameras caught some less than pristine language from the former Nordiques defenseman.

It worked just for a second as Souray collected a half hearted clearing attempt from Hemsky and then Horcoff and the big rearguard flattened a point shot past a screened Salo. The Habs brought some energy for the rest of the frame but Salo kept the door closed.

Montreal would make it 4-2 early in the third period but from then on they had just one chance to further close the gap but Salo came out and challenged Juneau who found himself alone and in the slot off a PP giveaway from Marc Andre Bergeron.

All's well that ends well and maybe Salo has a little more talent left in his gas tank.

Three Stars

Tommy Salo - No soft goals and he did all he could to prevent the Habs from scoring on their 5-on-3 man advantage

Sheldon Souray - 26:17 of icetime, a whopping 11 shots on net and he threw a couple of damaging hits. Plus he had two goals

Fernando Pisani - A goal and an assist and was in the mix all evening.

Oil Gauge

Just 23:08 for Staios tonight. The rearguard icetime was finally divided up in a more sensible manner. Brewer played nearly 22 minutes and Cross just went over that mark....The Habs went just 1/7 on the PP and that means three things. The first is the Oilers gave up at least one PP goal for the 10th game out of their first 11 contests. The second is that Salo had to have played great to keep it at one goal and the third is the Habs should rework their whole approach if they can only score once with these many chances...Marty Reasoner played 19:18, had an assist and was +2. He was also 9/17 from the faceoff circle

OilSlicks

Jason Chimera took his first HS, healthy scratch, of the season for this game and I guess it may serve as a wakeup call but realistically only on the offensive side. He's never shown a willingness to learn or care about the defensive facet of the game and this may catch up to him sooner than he had expected....His fellow Edmontonian Fernando Pisani, however, managed to pack a whole lot of productivity into his less than 11 minutes of icetime. Curiously none of that was spent killing penalties but the bottom line had Pisani competing hard and creating chances on the vast majority of his 16 shifts...Peter Sarno was drafted in the sixth round of the '97 entry draft so it was a long road before he saw his first NHL game. He'd played three full seasons with the Oilers AHL affiliate in Hamilton and last season saw him move to Finland to play for the Espoo Blues.

Next Game

Thursday night as the Oilers travel to Ottawa to take on the Sens. Gametime is 9:00 NST and it can be seen on SN West for you Albertans or on RDS for you Quebecios Oilers fans or folks who pick up that channel from your digitial or sattelite providers.