Michael Cammalleri is best known as a sniper but he turned playmaker Friday night to jump-start the Canadiens' offence en route to a 2-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators.

"I always make the play that's going to give us the best chance to score," said Cammalleri, who set up Erik Cole for the first goal of the game. "I'm going to pass it if I think the pass is open. I saw Colesy. I thought I could get the goalie to bite a little more but he read it pretty good and Erik had to make a great shot."

The goal was the culmination of a shift which saw Ottawa goaltender Craig Anderson make two saves on Cammalleri.

"We created some opportunities with our forecheck and good back pressure," said Cole. "On my goal, Davey (Desharnais) won a battle to free up the puck. Cammy made a good pass and I was just trying to get it up and at the net."

A strong forecheck also led the second goal at 16: 55 of the second period, exactly three minutes after the first score. Andrei Kostitsyn pressured Filip Kuba behind the Ottawa net and his pass up the middle landed on Lars Eller's stick.

"I was a bit surprised that he threw it out there blindly, but there was a good forecheck going," said Eller. "But I know they try to go up the middle a lot and I was in the right place.

"Travis (Moen) and Andrei did a good job of creating space," said Eller, who skated in on Anderson and then passed to Kostitsyn. "I know Andrei's always going to the net and I tried to open some room for him."

The forecheck was part of a strong defensive effort by the Canadiens, who were playing their first game in six nights.

"We played well defensively and tried to make it easy on ourselves," said Tomas Plekanec.

The most impressive was keeping the Senators off the board on their power play.

"Tonight, we were really sharp on the penalty kill," said Plekanec. "There were some times when we gave them passes through the seam and we don't want to do that but they have good players and they're going to make those plays but (goaltender Carey Price) made some good saves.

"There was rust for sure, but I think that's going to be better overall tomorrow," added Plekanec, looking ahead to Saturday's game against the Rangers in New York.

The Canadiens also did a good job of containing Jason Spezza, the Senators' leading scorer.

"That was definitely something we addressed before the game," said Cole. "We know that he likes making some East-West plays and we tried to negate it by getting right on him and limiting his chances."

Spezza did get free when he eluded defenceman Hal Gill in the neutral zone in the first period, but a second effort by Josh Gorges ended the threat.

"We had numbers back, but he made a pretty slick move on Andrei (Kostitsyn),"said Gorges. "But he had stopped moving forward. He was going across and that gave me a chance to a catch up and I got a piece of the puck."

The Senators went 0-for-4 on the power play and, while Gorges is normally a part of the penalty-killing until, he watched the Senators' lastgasp effort from the penalty box. He took a holding penalty with 1: 31 to play and the Senators pulled Anderson for a 6-on-4 advantage.

"I was sitting in the box praying that they wouldn't score," said Gorges. "I made a lot of promises when I was in there."

The win moved the Canadiens to 11th place in the Eastern Conference but they're only two points back of eighth-place Tampa Bay and have a game in hand.

"That was our goal to get back to .500 and, now that we've done that, we want to keep climbing the ladder," said Price.

phickey@ montrealgazette.com