MTL vs PHI

MONTREAL – The first move in the chess game that is the Stanley Cup playoffs was made Saturday by Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Stevens, who shuffled his forward lines for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semi-final against the Montreal Canadiens.

Stevens took bruising winger Scott Hartnell off a line with Mike Richards and put him back on the right side of a line with Vaclav Prospal and Daniel Brière, a combination that had tremendous success in the first round before a hamstring injury to Mike Knuble forced Stevens to tweak things.

The move also allows Joffrey Lupul to go back on a line with Richards, a pairing that was very successful for most of the season, while Patrick Thoresen was moved off the fourth line and completes the Flyers second line.

The only Flyers combination that should remain intact for Game 2 is the line centred by Jeff Carter with Scottie Upshall and R.J. Umberger, which ironically enough is the line that Knuble was playing on before he got hurt. Jim Dowd will still centre the Flyers fourth line with energy ball Steve Downie and Sami Kapanen.

Stevens hopes move ignites offence

Prospal and Brière are hopeful the switch back to playing with Hartnell can trigger some production from the top line, which has gone cold since Knuble was hurt in Game 5 of the Flyers first round series with the Washington Capitals.

“Our line wasn’t really that productive,” Prospal admitted Saturday morning after a spirited Flyers skate. “The first game wasn’t really our greatest game, so hopefully we’ll rebound as a line…(Hartnell) is a very big part of our line because he adds a physical presence to our line and makes some room on the ice.”

That is definitely an aspect of Hartnell’s game that differs from Lupul’s, and players like Brière and Prospal who thrive when given even an extra half second of time with the puck should benefit.

“They’re great players,” Hartnell said. “Who wouldn’t want to play with them?”

Lupul also had his most success this season playing alongside Richards, at one point racking up 10 goals and eight assists in nine games in December. A concussion and spinal cord contusion inflicted by teammate Derian Hatcher in a freak collision cost Lupul 14 games from Jan. 5 to Feb. 9, and he’s had to adjust to a wide range of assignments ever since.

“Since (Lupul) came back from injury he’s bounced around a lot,” Stevens said. “We haven’t really been able to find a home for him.”

All the juggling Stevens has had to do is directly related to the loss of Knuble, who could come back later in this series. Stevens noted that Knuble’s importance is felt in every game situation imaginable, from setting up camp in front of the net on the power play (where he had a career high 15 goals this year), to killing penalties and shutting down the opposing team’s most dangerous forward.

It was Knuble’s job in the first round to shadow Capitals rifleman Alexander Ovechkin, and he was limited to one goal through the first five games of the series. With Knuble out of the lineup, Ovechkin scored three times in the final two games.

“He’s a big loss,” Stevens said. “Hopefully he can come back soon.”

Carbonneau stands pat

While change was the order of the day for the Flyers, the Canadiens seem to have maintained the status quo for Game 2. Coach Guy Carbonneau said there will be no lineup changes tonight, though it remains to be seen how he uses his forwards.

In Game 1 he began double and sometimes triple shifting Alex Kovalev, a tactic Carbonneau turned to often late in the first round to try and get his star forward away from the stifling checking of Zdeno Chara. Stevens tried to match the pair of Kimmo Timonen and Braydon Coburn against Kovalev in Game 1, though not having the final change made that difficult at times.

Carbonneau is conscious the Flyers will throw a different look at the Canadiens and that his forwards will probably be a little more pressured when they have the puck than they were in Game 1, when it appeared they had much more time to make a play than they did against Boston.

Carbonneau expects Flyers to adjust

“If you look at the first game against Boston, we had time, we had space. I thought it was one of our best games of the year,” Carbonneau said. “But then they adjusted and it took some time for us to make the adjustments to get that time and space back. So I expect the same thing to happen.”

His experience from the last series also gives Carbonneau an extra weapon in managing the confidence of his team, which came crashing down in round one after being sky-high when the Canadiens led 3-1.

“A young team sometimes can have too much confidence, and they need a bad game or a bad stretch to wake up,” Carbonneau said. “That’s the eternal battle for a coach, to make sure your team is confident, even a little cocky because I think you need that, but not over confident.”

That eternal battle will become that much tougher if the Canadiens can pull out a win tonight.