Philadelphia Flyers Come up Empty Against Canadiens: Stats and Notes

The Philadelphia Flyers continue to search for reliable goaltending, falling to the Montreal Canadiens 5-4 in Montreal despite a large shot advantage

If there were hopes that the Philadelphia Flyers were due for a change in luck in goaltending and overall, those hopes were dashed Saturday night in Montreal. The night started poorly with an early Canadiens goal, that quite frankly, shouldn’t have counted due to goalie interference. The Flyers battled back from there, and it was 2-2 after the the first period.

The Flyers came out roaring in the second period, but Carey Price had other ideas. While the Flyers outshot the Canadiens 15-3 in the second period, the Canadiens scored the only goal to take a 3-2 lead. Matters got worse from there, as Michal Neuvirth turned the puck over behind the net for another bad goal against making it 4-2.

The Flyers continued to battle, and kept this one interesting right until the end. The Flyers would score twice more on the power play before time ran out on them. It was a 5-4 final score, despite the Flyers heavily outshooting the Canadiens 38-17.

Forwards

• The Only Constant is Change. As with nearly every game, there was some line tweaking for the Flyers tonight. Most of the lines remained the same, but there was a new third line of Dale Weise, Matt Read, and Brayden Schenn. This new 3rd line, however, didn’t do much. There possession numbers were fine, but those small bubbles above shows they were not generating anything in the way of actual scoring chances despite Schenn having 5 shots on goal.

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• Why People Hate Plus/Minus. The Couts line finished this one -2, and Jakub Voracek was on the ice for 4 goals against (not that they were his fault). Nevertheless, this line was the Flyers best, as is often the case.
• VandeVelde Snipes. Another game, another pretty goal from Chris VandeVelde. Clearly Carey Price was not expecting that puck to be past him so quickly.
• Giroux and Simmonds Doing Work. Claude Giroux kept putting up points, scoring again thanks to a Wayne Simmonds screen. Both Simmonds and Giroux played over 22 total minutes.
• Rookie-to-rookie. Travis Konecny scored his 3rd goal of the season, and it’s pleasing that 2 of them have come from deflecting Ivan Provorov shots.

Defense

• New Top Pair. This one saw the debut of Michael Del Zotto this season. With his return, he was paired with Shayne Gostisbehere, which is where he left last season upon being injured in February. This also allowed Hakstol to keep the other 2 pairings untouched.
• Top Pair Delivers. After Ghost has been regrettably been saddled with possession anchor Andrew MacDonald, he and Del Zotto took off in this one with dominant possession numbers, as well as a Ghost goal.
• Del Zotto Transformation Complete. For those that doubt Del Zotto has reinvented himself as a Flyer, he led the team with 7 hits against the Canadiens. He’s no longer the young, offense-only defenseman.
• Gudas and Manning Struggle. With a new top pair, you might’ve expected the job to be easier for the Manning and Gudas pair. In fact, their possession wasn’t great. Most of this came in the matchup against the Canadiens line with Alex Radulov and Alex Galchenyuk, who took a ~75% Corsi in the matchup and a goal.
• Provorov With Dwindling 5v5 Time. Ivan Provorov finished this game even with a power play assist, but his 5v5 ice time is shrinking. He played almost 6 minutes of special teams, but he’s now on 3rd pair duty otherwise. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing–stay tuned.

Goaltending and Special Teams

And here we come to the problem. Dave Hakstol reward Michal Neuvirth with another consecutive start, but this performance was not good enough. While you can discount the first goal as unfortunate due to unacknowledged interference, he really let the Flyers down in the 2nd and 3rd periods.

Just completely eliminating the first period when it was 2-2, the Flyers outshot the Canadiens 29-9 in the final two periods, yet were outscored 3-2. One of those goals was the Neuvirth turn over mentioned above. Another was a shorthanded goal late in the 3rd that Neuvirth should’ve come up with.

Otherwise, the Flyers’ special teams was quite good in this one. The Flyers killed off all 3 Montreal power plays, while converting 2 of 5 of their own power play opportunities.

Next: Gudas Playing Like a First Pairing Defenseman

Up Next

After a 2-day break, the Philadelphia Flyers are back at it against the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday night. The Flyers played the Red Wings only days ago, coming back from a 2-0 deficit to win in overtime.