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EDMONTON — The Canadiens’ Torrey Mitchell wasn’t feeling good before the start of last Tuesday night’s game in Vancouver.

The forward decided to stay behind in the locker room during the national anthem before heading out to the team bench. At the 3:57 mark of the first period, Mitchell deflected a point shot by Andrei Markov past goalie Ryan Miller to end a 39-game goalless drought en route to a 2-1 overtime win over the Canucks to start the Canadiens’ three-game Western Canada road trip.

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“After my first shift, I was going to maybe go back in the locker room and try to shake it off,” Mitchell recalled after the Canadiens practised Saturday afternoon in Edmonton. “But (coach Claude Julien) called our line again, so I jumped on and I scored. I was like, this is great.

“But I was dying,” Mitchell added. “It was bad.”

Mitchell returned to the locker room and started puking his guts out. He had caught the flu that has been making the rounds of the Canadiens’ locker room during this road trip.

Mitchell spent most of the first period in the locker room, but returned to the game and ended up logging 10:06 of ice time while being used by Julien in spot duty. The fact Mitchell had finally ended a brutal goal-scoring slump obviously made him feel a little better.

“It was bad … big time,” Mitchell said about the slump, adding he had never gone so long in his hockey life without scoring. “Overthinking things and squeezing the stick. It’s weighing on you, so it was good to score.”