Philadelphia Flyers Reach 1,000 Home Wins By Beating The Montreal Canadiens

I always love watching Flyers/Habs games.

They are always full of the three things that hockey fans love most: scoring, fighting and pretty moves. 

Jimmy van Riemsdyk and Mike Cammalleri were both scratched for this game with injuries. If anyone is following along, JVR scored both game winners in the two Flyer wins against the Habs this season. 

In the game versus the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, Peter Laviolette deployed a line consisting of Nik Zherdev, Jeff Carter, and Claude Giroux, which worked out extremely well. The same line was in effect tonight and produced two goals. 

The beginning of the game started out a little testy. Mike Richards and PK Subban jawed it out after the initial faceoff and Dan Carcillo began by banging bodies left and right. 

Three bad penalties by the Habs in the first period really doomed them. The Flyers scored on both 5-on-3 advantages; one goal came from Jeff Carter and the other from Kimmo Timonen. 

Meanwhile, as usual, Sergei Bobrovsky played extremely well. He was a force until the third period when he let in a couple of questionable goals, but he also saved a ton of sure goals. No harm, no foul. 

One observation that I noted was the fact that Nik Zherdev can't check anything without falling. He lost his balance on multiple checks. Weight room?

The Flyers really brought it in the second period—the fast pace and effort with which they were playing was a great sight.

After being up 3-0 at the start of the second, the Habs started to wake up and scored a goal. However, the momentum was crushed after Montreal took a penalty and they couldn't regain consciousness. 

Scotty Hartnell absolutely demolished David Desharnais and took a boarding penalty late in the third, and after getting into it with PK Subban, Danny Carcillo was tossed from the game. 

In their attempts at a final push, the Habs scored once more in the third. But that effort was stifled after Danny Briere knocked in an empty-netter, and the Philadelphia Flyers became the first NHL expansion team to reach 1,000 regular season home victories.

Final Take:

The Flyers played as one tonight and gelled perfectly. 

The Canadiens looked surprisingly flat on both sides of the puck. 

Mike Cammalleri was definitely missed by Montreal.