Round 2: Game 1 Review

In the pregame, Friedman mentioned that Stevens gave his players a task. They were each assigned a player from the Canadiens similar to themselves and were asked to provide an analysis to the rest of the team of their tendencies, strengths/weaknesses etc. Friedman said Timonen did Markov and Richards did Koivu. I'd sure like to see the rest of the list.

This game reminded me a lot of game 2 in round 1. Two goalposts early on, the Flyers got some breaks on a couple of goals, Markov puts a puck in a second after the buzzer, a missed penalty shot. A lot of breaks went the wrong way. In the end, Javageek's expected goal numbers favour the Flyers but I'd swear the home team had the better chances. That's observer bias for you.

Lines were pretty much as advertised.

Higgins / Koivu / Kovy (19 min EV)
AKost / Pleks / SKost (14 min)
Begin / Smoke / Kostpls (13 min)
Streit / Lapierre / Dandy (7 min)
Markov / Komi (18 min)
Hamrlik / Brisebois (18 min)
Bouillon / Gorges (17 min)

Match ups were loose. Early on Carbo wanted Koivu vs Briere, but as they fell behind it looks like he ran the top two while Stevens reacted. The top line wound up with an even split against the Flyers top 3. Elsewhere, I think Carbo preferred Smoke vs. Richards and #4 vs #4. Now that Koivu's back in game shape, he's eating up some of Lapierre's (and Plek's) minutes.

The defense were handled very differently than we saw in round 1. They must have been tired, beat up or both because they just rolled the three pairs. The top two pairs saw slightly more Briere and Carter and the #3 pair saw slightly more Richards. Here is their total icetime:
HAMRLIK, ROMAN 21:56
MARKOV, ANDREI 21:53
BOUILLON, FRANCIS 20:04
GORGES, JOSH 19:28
KOMISAREK, MICHAEL 17:46
BRISEBOIS, PATRICE 17:20

Canadiens shots from timeonice:




Bad stuff happened when the #5/6 D were on. Might want to reconsider the balanced icetime, Carbo, unless fatigue is worse than we know. That 4th line is going to cost the team before the playoffs are done.

Flyers:
Prospal / Briere / Lupul (16 min EV)
Umberger / Carter / Upshall (15 min)
Kapanen / Richards / Hartnell (16 min)
Thoreson / Dowd / Downie (6 min)
Coburn / Timonen (19 min)
Hatcher / Jones (19 min)
Kukkonen / Smith (14 min)

Flyers shots:



The Briere line was utterly destroyed, but through dumb luck managed to keep opponents off the scoreboard. This bodes well. Timonen was dominant but through some bad luck wound up -2. That bodes less well. If the Flyers are banking on Jim Dowd and company for offense, this series will be over in a hurry.