Coming off of four straight wins against Boston, the Philadelphia Flyers rolled that momentum into a huge Game 1 win at home over Montreal, chasing Jaroslav Halak and embarrassing Montreal 6-0 on Sunday night. Six different players scored for the Flyers, and Michael Leighton recorded his first full career playoff shutout while improving to 4-0 since replacing Brian Boucher midway through Game 5 of last series against Boston.
Braydon Coburn opened the scoring less than 4 minutes into the game on a Philadelphia powerplay, crashing the net and stuffing home a loose puck after some great work from Ville Leino down low. It stayed 1-0 until the 2nd period, when the Flyers scored 3 goals in the first 10 minutes to really put this game away early and give the fans at the Wachovia Center plenty to cheer about.
James van Riemsdyk scored just 30 seconds into the period, outhustling Scott Gomez to the front of the net on a faceoff in the Montreal zone and jamming a pass from Claude Giroux through Halak to put Philly up 2-0. A few minutes later, Danny Briere got his 8th goal of the playoffs with a booming slap shot from the faceoff circle to the right of Halak that was launched perfectly over his glove and under the crossbar. Simon Gagne chased Halak to the showers five minutes later, capitalizing on another Flyers’ powerplay as he came off the half wall and tossed a shot through traffic that Halak didn’t see until the red light went on behind him.
Scott Hartnell scored the Flyers’ 5th goal of the game, beating Carey Price with a perfectly one-timed wrist shot from the slot, and Claude Giroux scored on a beautiful backhand just over a minute later to finish up the scoring. Philly did a great job of getting traffic to the front of the net and keeping the Canadiens hemmed in their own end with an aggressive forecheck all night, forcing 11 turnovers from Montreal.
The Habs struggled to get anything going on their powerplay, going 0-for-4 and never really looking settled with the man advantage. Clearly, the services of veteran defenseman and powerplay quarterback Andrei Markov will be missed. The Canadiens looked uncharacteristically out of sorts all over the ice, and their 6 minor penalties left them at the mercy of an aggressive Philadelphia powerplay that has scored clutch goals for them all postseason.
Philadelphia will now have a chance to take a 2-0 series lead on friendly turf before the series heads to Montreal, and Michael Leighton will carry a shutout streak of over 100 minutes into Game 2, as he hasn’t allowed a goal since the first period of Game 7 against Boston.
