The Philadelphia Flyers roll into town riding a 3 game winning streak to face the 6-2 Montreal Canadiens. Flyers superstar Peter Forsberg will be looking for his first goal of the season and Quebec native Simon Gagne will look to keep up his hot start after notching 7 goals through his first 6 games of the season. Montreal, on the other hand, will be hoping to see a better performance out of Jose Theodore as his .874 save percentage puts him at 28th in the NHL.
First Period
15:34. Pierre Dagenais (Francis Bouillon, Tomas Plekanec)
It all starts with some nice work on the forecheck by none other than Pierre Dagenais. Dagenais fights for the puck and enables it to be picked up by Plekanec, who delivers it to Bouillon. Bouillon gets off a nice low shot on Esche, who gives up a juicy rebound for Dagenais. Pierre makes no mistake and scores his first goal of the season as he takes his first step out of the doghouse.
Second Period
8:50, Mike Richards 3 (power play) (Michal Handzus, Kim Johnsson)
A turnover is forced by Johnsson down low and he gives the puck on the half boards to Handzus. Handzus makes a nice pass to a wide open Mike Richards who easily fires it behind a helpless Theodore. Bulis’s second minor penalty of the night cost the Habs here as it’s never good when one of your best penalty killers is taking penalties.
15:47, Brian Savage 1 (power play) (Mike Richards, Michal Handzus)
Flyers are on a 5 on 3 power play after Kovalev gets called for delay of game. Desjardins makes a nice play at the point to save the puck from getting out of the zone and gets the puck to Handzus. Handzus finds Richards in the same spot where he scored the second goal of the game, except this time he finds a streaking Brian Savage who pokes it into the wide open net. Habs had given the Flyers 8 power plays up to this point, far too many under any circumstances.
Third Period
9:19, Mike Ribeiro 3 (power play) (Andrei Markov, Jose Theodore)
A long shot from his own end by Andrei Markov is stopped by Esche, but he lets out a rather large rebound that goes right to Ribeiro. Ribeiro make a nice move on the goalie and backhands one behind into the net. This goal is not a good representation of how the Habs power play had played up to this point as they generated few chances in the many opportunities that the Flyers gave them. Certainly Julien is going to need to go over some things in practice, because this aspect of the Habs game was sub-par at best.
Overtime
2:28, Mike Ribeiro 4 (Tomas Plekanec, Mark Streit)
Plekanec and Ribeiro break in two on one. Plekanec manages to get the puck across the ice to a waiting Ribeiro, but he fumbles with the puck and fails to get the shot away. Ribeiro then hangs on to it for a moment, fakes a pass to a trailing defencemen before walking in from the halfboards and wristing one home for the Canadiens victory.
Final Shots: Montreal 29, Philadelphia 22