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Two goals by Travis Sanheim and a late desperation push that reduced a three-goal to deficit to one fell short as the Philadelphia Flyers lost, 4-3, to the Montreal Canadiens, on Sunday evening at Wells Fargo Center. Shortly after Sanheim made it 4-2, Travis Konecny added the goal that cut the gap to 4-3.
That was as close as the Flyers would get before time expired.
Nick Suzuki, Brendan Gallagher, Cole Caufield (PPG) and Jake Evans scored for the Canadiens. Winning goalie Cayden Primeau denied 23 off 26 shots on goal by Philly.
Making his NHL debut, Aleksei Kolosov stopped 20 of 24 shots. He made some impressive looking saves, especially a spectacular save on Suzuki off a 2-on-0 rush early in the second period. The first Canadiens goal saw Nick Seeler out too high and Flyers forwards get bunch together to one right side, leaving the middle open for Montreal to get first to a rebound and for Suzuki to score.
The real killer, as well as Kolosov played overall, was Caufield's power play goal at 12:48 of the second period. Caufield's shot went off Kolosov's hip and into the net on the short side. A few minutes later, the Flyers were a bit lax in their own end a seeing eye diagonal pass from the right point was directed to Evans well to the left of the net at a sharp angle.
Offensively, Flyers continued to look disjointed for lengthy stretches of the game but got the game to the first intermission tied at 1-1 on Sanheim's first of the game. Mostly, the Flyers had various "almost" plays arise sporadically but little sustained momentum until late in the third period.
Coming off a monster performance on Saturday against Minnesota, the line with Sean Couturier centering Matvei Michkov and Travis Konency had some good shifts and some bad ones. Couturier individually was fine. Konecny had issues with hope passes going for turnovers. Michkov had an up-and-down game. The rest of the forward corps had very sporadic decent moments but no payoff and too much time spent defending.
Playing his first NHL game of the season, Emil Andrae had a few good plays with the puck and overall played a decent game. Andrae landed a clean hip check on one of first shifts but the play ended up going for a Montreal scoring chance.
With Cam York sidelined at least two weeks, Sanheim and Rasmus Ristolainen stepped up and had a very strong weekend as the revised top pairing. Ryan Poehling had some good shifts up front. Joel Farabee had a late-game assist that will hopefully get him to settle into him game. Both Tyson Foerster and Morgan Frost continued their struggles. Owen Tippett had a very nice assist on the Konecny goal but otherwise not a very good game, either.
For more on Sunday's game, see the Postgame 5. On the Mondays with Meltzer edition of Flyers Daily, Jason Myrtetus and I dissected the Flyers' 2-6-1 start through nine games and ran down a challenging week ahead.
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