Philadelphia Flyers: Inside the numbers against Montreal

The Flyers and Canadiens were on two very different paths this season but they’ll meet up in the first round.

When looking at the seasons of both the Flyers and the Canadiens, you will notice the vast differences between the two teams. One was a contender in the East while the other way trying to stay afloat in the race. But now the two will see each other for potentially seven games during the next week or so.

The drop off in points wasn’t humongous, but was significant enough to show the disparity between the two team. The Flyers finished the shortened season with 89 points while the Canadiens come in with 71 points.

The Flyers played the Canadiens well this season, coming out on top in two of the three matchups. An always possible scenario, Carey Price was able to steal Montreal’s only win of the series. That is something the Flyers have to keep an eye on.

And that brings us to our first area of focus against the Canadiens.

Goaltending Matchup

Goaltending will play a huge role in this series as Carter Hart will go toe to toe with his idol in Price. The games played between the two are slightly different as Price would get most of Montreal’s games.

With a bigger sample, Price did edge out Hart in the win category. But that’s not part of the stats we will be taking a look out. Hart had the edge in both goals-against-average (2.42) and save percentage (.914).

Diving deeper into the goaltending stats, GSAA shows us the saves a goaltender makes compared to that of the average goaltender. Both Price and Hart come out on the positive side of that stat. That’s not a surprise given the two are some of the best goaltenders in the league.

They both fall the same way when he look at HDGSAA which is the high danger goals part of the above stat. However, Price has a huge advantage in that stat. His higher amount of games and potentially weaker defense in front of him may explain part of that. But he is stopping almost seven more goals than the league average in that category.

Price has almost 1,000 more minutes than Hart does on the ice as well. That is due to the Canadiens having much younger partners behind him. Hart has Brian Elliott in his corner, a much more proven option than Charlie Lindgren and Cayden Primeau. Keith Kinkaid did appear in a few games for Montreal, but wasn’t a sharp go-to option.

So Price was almost forced to play a majority of the games. Thus his bigger sample size in just about every category. He has also been around the league a long time and knows what to expect when the postseason roles around. Hart has handled things well so far, but his first series will be a test.

And while the Canadiens have scored a bit less than the Flyers have this season, they have quite a few players who knows how to put the puck in the net.

Offensive Matchup

The one thing the two teams have in common on the offensive end is that they each have a player who finished with 61 points this season. That would be Travis Konecny and Tomas Tatar. Konecny broke out this season with 24 goals and 37 points. He was on pace to potentially shatter his career high of 24 goals.

While not a breakout season, it was Tatar’s best points-wise in the NHL thus far. He matched, and beat, his point total from last season while playing in 12 fewer games. It was also his best season as far as possession metrics go. He found himself a role on the Canadiens and looks to be a key part to their offense.

The Flyers have three players close behind Konecny, all with at least 50+ points. The Canadiens, while having no one with that amount, do have five with at least 40+ points. Philadelphia only have two players with that amount.

So both teams know how to spread the offense around. 30 players that have appeared in a game for the Flyers have at least one point this season. That number is 29 players for the Canadiens. 19 of those for Philadelphia have double digit points. It comes to 17 for Montreal.

During these playoffs, the Flyers have gotten contributions from more players. Both teams have a similar scenario where a few of their stars haven’t recorded a goal thus far. For the Canadiens that includes their regular-season leading scorer in Tatar. The Flyers didn’t have any output from Claude Giroux.

Whichever team can have their stars come alive will likely be able to get the early advantage in this series. Depth scoring is never a bad thing, but the key to success is having all players finding a way to contribute. That’s also not to say the two above aren’t contributing in other ways.

Another thing noticeable between the two teams is neither has been able to find the advantage on the power play. But each has had success with the penalty kill.

Special Teams

A game can be won or lost due to special teams. Whether that is the power play or the penalty kill. A particularly strong effort from either unit can turn the tide in a game. And that’s something neither team has been able to do.

The Canadiens come in 0-12 on the man advantage during their play-in series. That jumps to 0-18 if they count their exhibition against Toronto. The Flyers have an 0-11 showing on the power play after their round robin games. It goes to 0-12 adding in their exhibition against Pittsburgh.

Neither team was particularly strong on the man advantage during the season either.

The Flyers came in at 20.8%. While a much improved unit from a season ago, this was 14th in the league. The Canadiens were even worse on the power play, coming in at 17.7%. That was 22nd in the league. Though that was greatly improved from their second to last place finish as a unit last season.

What the two teams don’t have on the power play, they make up for with their strong penalty kills. The Flyers didn’t yield a power play goal until their final game against Tampa. They were 9/10 as a unit during their three seeding games. If you had in the exhibition game, the unit stopped 12 out of 13 opportunities.

The Canadiens yielded a few more opportunities, but still came out as a strong unit. In 17 opportunities against the Penguins power play, they kept them off the scoresheet during 14 of those. Counting their exhibition game, they shut down 17 of 20 opportunities.

The Flyers were sharp during the regular season as well, just outside of the top ten with a 81.8% on the kill. Mike Yeo helped turn that unit around big time. They were 26th in the league just a season ago.

The Canadiens were a bit lower as they finished the season with a 19th place finish on the penalty kill. Their 78.7% was actually slightly worse than what they posted last season. Their above 80% mark had them 12th last year.

Finding a way to break through on special teams could make or break this series. If one teams gets hot their, that could be the key advantage they need.

We’ll find out how these two teams matchup for real starting on Wednesday. The Flyers are looking like one of the best in the league while the Canadiens have already surprised quite a few people.