Philadelphia Flyers coach Alain Vigneault was blunt as he described his team’s performance against the Canadiens Friday.
“At the end of the day, we got our butts kicked,” Vigneault said on a video conference call from Toronto after the Flyers dropped a 5-0 decision to the Canadiens. The loss left the best-of-seven, first-round playoff series deadlocked at a game apiece.
“There’s no doubt that Montreal’s will tonight to play the right way and do the right thing was much higher than ours,” Vigneault said. “At this time of the year, with the importance of the game, you certainly don’t expect that. We have to turn the page, move on and get ready for the next one.”
While Vigneault wants to forget Game 2, he does want his players to remember what he perceived as a slight late in the game.
“We saw at the end of the game they had a 5-0 lead and Kirk Muller put his No. 1 power play on the ice.” said Vigneault. “We had embarrassed ourselves enough. I don’t think we needed to get embarrassed more, so I’m going to make sure we’re very aware of that next game.”
Tomas Tatar scored his first two goals of the playoffs while Brendan Gallagher and Phil Danault have yet to score goals. But the Flyers’ top players have also had trouble finding the back of the net. Through five post-season games, Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny and James Van Riemsdyk have all failed to score.
“There’s no doubt that at any time, in season or in playoff hockey, you need your top players to be driving the bus,” Vigneault said. “I know their intentions are good, but it has to transform on the ice surface. Today, the total team was off and we haven’t had one of those in a long time. At the same time, we all picked a bad time to have a bad game.”
Giroux said the game was lost in the first period. The Canadiens outshot the Flyers 16-6 and took a 2-0 lead on goals by Tatar and Jesperi Kotkaniemi. Tatar made it 3-0 early in the second period.
“I think when they made it 3-0, we had a few chances after that, but sometimes when you’re pressing, you get chances against you,” Giroux said. “The first period, that’s where we lost the game. After that, we were just trying to catch up to them. It wasn’t our best effort.”
If there was a surprise in the game, it was that the smaller Canadiens were able to find success around the Flyers’ net.
“They came out hard,” said 22-year-old goaltender Carter Hart, who was pulled late in the second period after giving up four goals on 26 shots. “They were winning a lot of foot races and jumping on loose pucks and obviously, I have to make a couple more saves. They’re a team that plays hard, they crash the net hard. They have small forwards who skate really fast.”
“They’re a quick team,” defenceman Matt Niskanen added. “Personally, I think we have gotten out of the zone all right, but they put pressure on. They force us into some mistakes and they’re opportunistic, too. I think it’s more their quickness around the net. They fling pucks toward the crease with bodies there. They’re hungrier on the net, so they’ve gotten some goals out of situations like that. It’s going to take a better effort from everybody to get the ice tilted back the right way.”
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