Led by Carter Hart’s second consecutive shutout, the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Montreal Canadiens 2-0 to take a 3-1 series lead.
The Philadelphia Flyers are one step closer to the second round after taking a 3-1 series lead over the Montreal Canadiens. Philadelphia defeated Montreal 2-0 in Game 4 off of a second straight shutout from young netminder Carter Hart. The Flyers came into the game with a 2-1 series lead fresh off their 1-0 win in game three on Sunday night.
Michael Raffl opened the scoring at 6:32 in the first period with his second goal of the 2020 playoffs. Raffl fired a wrist shot from the top of the circle and cleanly beat Carey Price over his shoulder, giving Philadelphia another early lead.
The second period seemed to be leaning in favor towards Montreal. The Canadiens came out of the first intermission outshooting Philadelphia 10 to five. Montreal had a chance to tie the game up on a powerplay in the second but couldn’t convert.
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With just under three minutes remaining in the period, Flyers defenseman Philippe Myers’ shot took a deflection and the puck changed direction on its way towards goal. Price wasn’t able to read the movement of the puck and Philadelphia took a 2-0 lead heading into the final period of play.
The third period wasn’t much different for Montreal. The Canadiens once again outshot the Flyers 12-7 and had another chance on the powerplay.
Unfortunately for Montreal, they weren’t able to find the back of the net and had all 29 of their shots saved by Hart. Montreal hasn’t scored a goal in almost 130 minutes of game time, going back to the third period of game two.
So far in the series, the team to score first has won the game. Montreal has only scored one goal in the three games they have lost, while Carey Price has only given up a total of five goals in four games. Despite the series being three games to one, the teams are even in the goals department at five each.
The depth of the Flyers’ roster has been a huge factor in their success in this series. Out of the top six scoring leaders in the regular season for Philadelphia, only Jakub Voracek has scored a goal in the playoffs this year. Philadelphia’s bottom-six has come up big in this series and is a big reason why they are up 3-1 in the series.
Montreal has struggled to generate any type of offense outside of the 5-0 game two blowout win. The only goal they have scored outside of game two was a powerplay goal from Shea Weber in game one. Montreal has only scored two even-strength goals in the series and are 3/12 (25%) on the powerplay.
Philadelphia will try to close out the series in five games on Wednesday while Montreal looks to fight for another day. Carey Price has been really good in this series and will need some help from his team to generate some offense if Montreal has any hope of prolonging the series.