PHILADELPHIA – The Montreal Canadiens visited the Philadelphia Flyers Tuesday night looking to get their season back on track.
The Flyers scored two power play goals I the first period en route to a 4-2 win over the Habs.
Wayne Simmonds scored twice for the Flyers including the game-winner midway through the third period.
Steve Mason made 30 saves in win over Habs – photo by Lewis.Bleiman
“I just tried to get open,” Simmonds said. “Swung up top and came down the middle and [Voracek] got this eyes up and found me. Was a [heck] of a play. … He’s a strong guy. I think he’s probably, from what I’ve seen, one of the top two, three players in the League putting guys on his back and rolling around the net and making plays and scoring goals off of it.”
Brayden Schenn and Matt Read also scored for Philadelphia.
Steve Mason made 30 saves for the win.
“At the tail end of a game here against a team that we’re trying to catch, trying to put some space between teams, the guys really come through,” Mason said. “The penalty kill has been an up-and-down thing for us all season long. Tonight we needed it for a whole five minutes and everybody did a great job. … Just kind of shows what we can do when guys are going on all cylinders there.”
The Habs managed only one goal in four power play chances and that was the difference in the outcome.
Wayne Simmonds crashed the net for two goals Tuesday night against Mike Condon – Photo by Lewis Bleiman
“Tonight, the difference was the special teams,” Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said. “We had a chance to tie up the game and we had bad reads and bad execution. Pretty simple.”
“We got some quality scoring chances,” he said. “But Mason got the First Star [of the game] tonight. Not the first time that’s happened to us lately. Every goalie that we face seems really comfortable to play against us.”
But the Habs are spiraling downward seemingly out of control and are 6-19-1 in their skid.
“We’re just all looking for answers in here,” Nathan Beaulieu said. “It’s frustrating. We’re not going to give up on each other. We all care for each other and want each other to do well. But it starts right in this room, and we got to really lock ourselves in here right now.”
Andrei Markov and Jeff Petry scored for Montreal and Mike Condon had 32 saves in the loss.
“We’re not going to have a lot of practice opportunities here, especially over the next month,” Philadelphia coach Dave Hakstol said. “It’s about being ready to play on game day, doing whatever that takes physically and mentally. Got to do as good a job as we can being fresh physically and allowing ourselves to be fresh mentally. This is a typical example of the type of game we’ll be involved in. Lot of energy spent. Tomorrow is a good day to recover, get ourselves ready to go and get on the road and travel.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.