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Ilya Kovalchuk delivered a special birthday gift to his son, Philipp, Saturday night at the Bell Centre when he scored in overtime to give the Canadiens a 2-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“My kid had his 11th birthday yesterday and that’s what he asked me,” Kovalchuk said in the Canadiens locker room after the game. “We gave him the PlayStation, but he said: ‘I want you to score a goal, that would be the best present.’ So I think he would be satisfied, for sure.”

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Kovalchuk’s wife and his four children — two boys and two girls — arrived in Montreal on Thursday from their home in California and they were all in attendance Saturday night at the Bell Centre.

For Kovalchuk, it was his sixth goal in 15 games since signing with the Canadiens as a free agent. Two of them have come in overtime and he has also scored a shootout winner.

Photo by Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images

“I think he scored a lot of those big goals for us, whether it’s shootout, overtime,” coach Claude Julien said in his postgame news conference. “We wouldn’t have those wins if it wasn’t for him. He’s not the perfect player … there isn’t a perfect player. But everything that I’ve talked about for days now and weeks, I guess, his energy, his will, his happy for (Marco) Scandella to score his first goal. That’s the first thing that comes out of his mouth. You know he’s got all the right demeanour for this team right now, being a veteran and buying into everything we’re trying to do here. So there’s that and then those goals.”