The Flyers pushed the upstart Montreal Canadiens to the brink of elimination Tuesday and moved to within one victory of their first NHL playoff series win since 2012.
Carter Hart recorded his second straight shutout, and the Flyers got goals from Michael Raffl and Phil Myers as they defeated Montreal, 2-0, and took a three-games-to-one lead in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals in Toronto.
The Flyers can wrap up the series with a win in Wednesday's 8 p.m. matchup. They are 20-2 in series in which they have won three of the first four games.
Hart made 29 saves and became the third goalie in franchise history to register consecutive playoff shutouts, joining Bernie Parent and Michael Leighton.
After controlling the first period, the Flyers were outplayed in the second session but were able to take a 2-0 lead into the third, thanks in part to a soft goal allowed by Carey Price.
Yes, even great goaltenders make mistakes.
With 2 minutes, 56 seconds left in the second, defenseman Phil Myers fired an innocent-looking 45-foot shot from near the right boards that appeared to be going wide. But it deflected off Price's stick and into the net to put the Flyers ahead, 2-0.
The Canadiens had a 10-5 shots domination in the second, but Hart stood tall. On one of his saves, he got a pad on Jeff Petry's long blast and deflected it off the post with 5:42 left, the seventh time Montreal had hit iron in the last two games.
Less than three minutes later, Myers' surprising tally gave the Flyers a two-goal cushion
Coach Alain Vigneault, unhappy with the team's offensive production, made two lineup changes, shuffled all four lines, and got the start he wanted.
Raffl, moved from the fourth to first line, took a drop pass from Sean Couturier and, from the top of the right circle, whipped a perfectly placed shot into the upper left corner to give the Flyers a 1-0 lead with 13:38 left in the first.
Unlike in their 1-0 win on Sunday, the Flyers had numerous odd-man rushes in the first period, during which they outshot the Canadiens, 11-5, and won 73% of the faceoffs.
James van Riemsdyk, who has been unproductive in the postseason, and Nic Aube Kubel were taken out of the lineup. Aube-Kubel appeared to injure his foot blocking a shot late in Game 3.
Rookie wingers Joel Farabee (second line) and Connor Bunnaman (fourth line) entered the lineup and gave the Flyers more speed. In other moves, Claude Giroux dropped from the top line to the third unit, and Scott Laughton went from the second to third unit, which was still centered by Derek Grant.
If this was normal times, the Canadiens would be on the golf course, their season long completed.
In a way, they had conceded that their games didn't matter when they made three deals at the trade deadline, saying au revoir to veterans and stockpiling draft choices.
But then the coronavirus pandemic caused the NHL to expand its tournament from 16 teams to 24. So Montreal, which had the fewest points of any of the original 24 teams in the tournament, gladly accepted its reprieve, started getting production from its young players, and didn't resemble the team that had nine more losses than wins in the regular season.
The Habs stunned Pittsburgh in the play-in series and have given the Flyers all they can handle in the conference quarterfinals.
The Flyers, however, have regrouped strongly after Montreal's 5-0 win in Game 2, and they have emerged as the NHL's best defensive team in the postseason. They entered Tuesday allowing just 1.50 goals over six postseason games, and that number dropped after another shutout.
