MTL vs PHI

MONTREAL - The Philadelphia Flyers woke up Friday morning with a world of questions.

What went wrong? How did they let a two-goal lead vanish into thin air for the third time this post-season to lose the first game of their series with the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 in overtime? How could they possibly let a last-minute lead slip away, only to have Montreal’s checking line score the winner in overtime? Will the Flyers be able to break a two-year old losing streak against Montreal that stretched to seven games on Thursday night?

The answers to those questions are not obvious, because both the Flyers and Canadiens camps admit Game 1 was a bit strange, and may have been the result of both teams trying to recover from the emotional hangover of a seven-game series.

But the one thing that kept popping up from the Flyers was that they needed to skate better to have any hope of winning Game 2 and getting the desired split in Montreal before heading home to Philadelphia.

“When we’re skating and we’re playing the game we can play,” head coach John Stevens said, “we can play with anybody.”

The same refrain was coming from top line centre Daniel Brière, who felt his team definitely needs to improve its speed game to keep up with the swift Canadiens.

“We did it in stretches (in Game 1),” Brière said, “but not consistently enough to get the win.”
Is this the Philadelphia Flyers? Is this the team that still has gritty former players Bobby Clarke and Paul Holmgren among its executive?

And do the Flyers realize they are playing perhaps the fastest team in the league in the Canadiens, a team that had a world of trouble trying to handle the stifling, trapping style of the Boston Bruins in round one?

To get into a speedy, up and down scoring-fest with the Canadiens may not be the smartest way for the Flyers to go in this series, but one thing that Stevens identified as a problem from Game 1 that definitely would need to change is Philadelphia’s turnovers, which led directly to a penalty shot and a goal against Thursday night.

“We got ourselves in trouble by not managing the puck,” Stevens said. “Montreal is so good in transition, their defence makes such a good first pass, if we don’t manage the puck we’ll be in trouble.”

Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau was told of Stevens’ comments and said getting the defence involved is something his staff identified as a way to remedy Montreal’s problems scoring goals last season, especially in 5-on-5 situations where the Canadiens were simply atrocious a y ear ago.

“Our difficulty last year was trying to score goals so it’s something we’ve tried to incorporate in our game, getting the defence involved,” Carbonneau said. “It’s not something we just tried last week.”

While the Flyers had a lot of questions to answer Friday, the Canadiens were trying not to bask too much in the glow of winning a hockey game they may not have fully deserved to win.

“Are you more relaxed? Yes, but it means nothing,” Carbonneau said. “We were up 3-1 in the last series and we wound up having to go seven games. We’re prepared for a long series.”

Carbonneau was asked if he was concerned that his team had pulled out a lucky win and, after pausing a moment to calm down, he came out with this pearl of wisdom.

“In the playoffs, I want to be lucky 16 times,” he said. “We all want to play a perfect game. Did we play well? No, but we won.”

And that’s probably what must scare the Flyers the most, because even if neither team played their best hockey in Game 1, the Canadiens ceiling for improvement has to be considered much higher than Philadelphia’s.