The comeback kids played it a little too close to the sun, falling 5-4 in a shootout loss to the Philadelphia Flyers at the Bell Centre on Tuesday.
After giving up three goals in the first period, the Montreal Canadiens stormed back in the second, taking a 4-3 lead. The Flyers forced overtime with the lone third-period goal, and eventually Flyers goalie Daniel Vladar shut the door in the shootout to give the away team the win.
Coach Martin St. Louis placed in his faith in struggling netminder Sam Montembeault for a second straight game, and while the boo birds came in the rough first period, he was sound the rest of the way in a busy 38-save performance.
Just 1:54 into the game, Bobby Brink scored off a redirection in the slot to give the Flyers a 1-0 lead early.
Then the Flyers exposed the Canadiens penalty killing unit by scoring twice on the power play in under a minute. First it was Cam York trading places with Trevor Zegras at the point on a 5-on-3.
That was followed by Zegras getting his second point of the period. Montembeault kicked Zegras’s shot right to Brink, who scored yet again to give the road team a 3-0 advantage heading into the first intermission. The Flyers outshot the Habs 12-2 in a lopsided first.
The Canadiens got going in the second, scoring twice early to pull to within a goal. Kirby Dach scored his second of the season from a sharp angle, one-timing the carom off the end boards.
Just over a minute later on the power play, captain Nick Suzuki completed a slick passing play with the man-advantage to score his third of the campaign. 3-2 Flyers with plenty of race track to play.
Dach lit the lamp again to tie the game 3-3 at 13:28 of the second, this time from a feed by Lane Hutson.
The Habs took their first lead of the night on the power play. After Hutson kept the puck in the offensive zone, Ivan Demidov sniped one past Vladar to make it 4-3 after 40 minutes.
In the third period, two of the league’s toughest heavyweights, Arber Xhekaj and Nicolas Deslauriers, squared off at centre ice. They both got their shots in before the officials intervened. Xhekaj’s teammates showed their appreciation with a stick tap along the boards.
In the third period, Nikita Grebenkin scored his first NHL goal, and it was enough to tie the game 4-4 and send it to overtime.
Off to 3-on-3 overtime they went, and although the Habs have shown a knack for scoring in open ice, they couldn’t seal the extra point this time. In the shootout, all three of Montreal’s shooters (Demidov, Cole Caufield, Suzuki) were stuffed by Vladar, while Zegras beat Montembeault five-hole after skating in slow-motion to the net.
Montreal’s luck in come-from-behind victories was bound to run out, and giving up a three-spot to the rebuilding Flyers on home ice didn’t help matters. Montembeault made coach St. Louis look foolish early, but he improved as the night progressed, and in the end, the hope is the performance will help the goalie in regaining his confidence.
The first power play unit with Demidov continued to hum, going 2 for 4. But do the Habs miss Christian Dvorak, their old reliable centre now skating for the other side? The Habs gave up two goals short-handed. One place where they didn’t miss him, surprisingly, was in the faceoff dot: the Habs won 65.5 per cent of draws and Dvorak went 5-for-15 against Suzuki.
Suzuki and Hutson, who had a two-helper night, topped Hockey Stat Cards’ nightly report. Dach also had a strong performance, and the big man is finally looking comfortable on the ice again after two difficult years.
The Habs hit the road to face the New Jersey Devils on Thursday before returning home to take on the Utah Mammoth.
Note for all the Liveblog regulars: apologies for being dark these last couple of weeks. The Liveblog will return to the Hockey Inside Out YouTube channel later this week.
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