Not quite a reassuring win, with the Canadiens eking out a 5-4 win against the Flyers. It reminded me of some tougher stretches the team had in the previous seasons, when the Canadiens would almost wobble upright with a few unconvincing wins, before hitting another tough patch.
Once again, they were flagrantly outshot, 38-17. The Flyers were threatening in the Canadiens zone much more than the opposite. If the goalies had been exchanged, the score would have been much different. Michael Neuvirth continues the post-Bernard Parent tradition of Flyer goaltending.
It was another hard game to watch. Gary Galley tried to downplay a late slewfoot by Michael del Zotto as nothing more than competitive physical play, like back in the day. He talked about the "comfortability" of something or other. Wayne Simmonds, even though he hacked at Carey Price after a whistle, and despite the addition of Shea Weber and Andrew Shaw, remains undeceased.
And what about those butt-ugly jerseys the Flyers were wearing? I didn't bother googling, but I figured those poorly-contrasting numerals on the back of their sweaters are to commemorate the 50 years they've been polluting the NHL, since 1967, but not every idea is a winner. It's already hard enough to distinguish hobo Jakub Voracek from vagrant Claude Giroux and their tangled mats of a beard, their sparse dentition, if you throw me the curveball of shiny uniform numbers that glare but don't distinguish themselves on camera, I basically can barely tell Radko Gudas from Travis Konecny.
Michel Therrien mentioned that the Canadiens are taking too many minor penalties, and we had five again tonight, and yielded two powerplay goals. We were outhit 35-24, even though the Flyers were in possession of the puck most of the game.
We out-GVA'ed the Flyers 15-12 though, so that's a feather in our cap.
I have no idea what GVA stands for.
Good on Greg Pateryn for scoring his first of the season on a nice wrist shot from the slot. He didn't have a lot of icetime though, and I wished he turned up the intensity a little more when it comes to pushing back against physical play. He should shine against teams like Columbus and Philly.
Let's hope for two or three good practices to right the ship before we play again on Tuesday.
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