Sunday, October 12, 2014

Montreal Canadiens Comes Back From 3-O Down To Knock-Off Philadelphia Flyers


 |

Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau scored in the shootout, and the Montreal Canadiens rallied from a three-goal deficit to beat the winless Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 on Saturday night.

Parenteau was the fourth Canadien to go in the shootout against Ray Emery and the first to score.

The Canadiens really won this game with a dominant third when they scored three times to send it to OT. Andrei Markov, Tomas Plekanec and Alex Galchenyuk all had goals to keep the Canadiens (3-0) perfect this season.

The Flyers are winless through three games for the third straight season. They fired coach Peter Laviolette after three games last season and replaced him with Craig Berube. Berube certainly wasn’t on the hot seat this season, though the Flyers held a team meeting on their off day Friday.

Wayne Simmonds scored twice and Mark Raffl had a goal for the Flyers.

The Canadiens controlled the third after a listless first two periods to stun the Flyers. The Canadiens outshot the Flyers 14-2 during their game-changing run in the third, getting goals from Markov and Plekanec to cut the lead to 3-2.


Emery was on his knees after turning away one shot, but Plekanec pounced on the puck and scored to make it 3-2.

Galchenyuk tipped in Plekanec’s shot with 5:20 left in regulation to tie it at 3-all.

The Canadiens outshot the Flyers 19-4 in the third. The Flyers are in serious trouble this season on the blue line with injuries sidelining Braydon Coburn and Kimmo Timonen.

The Flyers struggled in their first two games, never holding a lead and already facing questions about staving off a similar winless funk to last season.

They eventually fell to 1-7 before a strong rebound earned them a spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

With no desire to keep the losses mounting, the Flyers regrouped with a meeting on Friday. Berube told his team to focus on playing the right way and tune out critics.

Of course, scoring two goals in the first 4 minutes of the game had to help.

Raffl’s backhander beat Carey Price and opened the scoring at the 3:39 mark. Simmonds, who picked up where he left off with a hot end to last season, followed with a goal just 18 seconds later for a 2-0 lead.

Simmonds pounded in Vinny Lecavalier’s rebound in the second to make it 3-0.

Simmonds scored twice in 57 seconds in the home opener on Thursday. He’s been on a bit of a hot streak at home, dating to the 2014 post-season. He scored three goals against the New York Rangers in Game 6 of a first-round Eastern Conference playoff game.

Simmonds was scoreless in his first seven games last season, but has quickly become this season’s top scoring threat.

No comments:

Post a Comment