The Montreal Canadiens, whose regular season was the definition of mediocrity, are playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs only because of the the NHL's expanded field.
But they don't look out of their element.
The eighth-seeded Habs finally solved Carter Hart and kept their season alive Wednesday night with a wild 5-3 win over the top-seeded Flyers in Toronto.
The Flyers have a three-games-to-two lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarterfinal, which resumes Friday.
Joel Armia scored a pair of goals and Nick Suzuki snapped a 3-3 tie with 9 minutes, 1 second left to pace Montreal, which stunned Pittsburgh in the play-in series and is trying to do the same to the Flyers.
Jake Voracek (three points), in arguably his best game of the season, scored twice in a losing cause, the first multi-goal playoff game of his career.
Phillip Danault's empty-net goal secured the win.
With 9:23 left in regulation, Joel Farabee's power-play goal tied it at 3-3. Just 22 seconds later, after a Flyers turnover behind the net, an all-alone Suzuki took a feed from Jonathan Drouin, made a deft move, and scored from in front to give the Canadiens 4-3 lead.
The Flyers' defense, so dominating in their three wins in the series, allowed a slew of Grade A chances against the desperate Canadiens.
The Flyers took advantage of a five-minute major penalty on center Jesperi Kotkaniemi and scored a pair of power-play goals _ both by Voracek _ to take a 2-1 second-period lead.
The power play had been 1-for-30 in the postseason before Voracek scored his third and fourth goals of this series.
Kotkaniemi boarded Travis Sanheim, who was cut near his right eye and needed medical treatment, and he received a major penalty and game misconduct with 18:15 left in the second period. Sanheim returned to the ice a short time later.
Voracek tied the score at 1-1 when his one-timer from the top of the right circle appeared to deflect off defenseman Ben Chiarot and past goalie Carey Price, ending the Flyers' 0-for-18 power-play funk.
About four minutes later, Voracek again put a shot off Chiarot and past Price, giving the Flyers a short-lived 2-1 lead. Claude Giroux had assists on both goals, tying him for fifth in that department (45 helpers) in franchise playoff history.
With 9:48 left in the second, Montreal tied it at 2-2 when Armia scored his second of the night. From a tough angle on the right, Armia put a shot off Hart's left shoulder and into the net on the short side. It was a goal Hart would want back.
Before the wide-open period ended, Brendan Gallagher ended his drought on his 37th shot of the postseason to put the Habs ahead, 3-2. With the Canadiens on a power play, Gallagher knocked Suzuki's pass out of midair and beat Hart with 8:30 to go in the second.
Suzuki, from the top of the right circle, fired a shot that deflected off Ivan Provorov and past Hart to give the Habs an apparent 4-2 lead with 5:26 remaining in the second. But the Flyers challenged for offside, and the goal was erased when the video review showed Drouin was indeed offside.
Montreal, blanked in its two previous games, ended its scoreless streak just 2:53 after the opening faceoff as it got a shorthanded goal from Armia.
Defenseman Xavier Ouellet fired a center-ice shot off the end boards, and Armia beat Sanheim to the carom and whipped a slot shot past Hart. That ended Hart's scoreless streak at 122:52, seventh-longest in the franchise's playoff history.
Since the team that has scored first had won each of the first four games, the goal seemed significant.
"We're going to need to play our best," coach Alain Vigneault said before the game. "I think we've been playing good. I do think we've been working extremely hard and we are going to have to bring it tonight."
The Flyers, however, were outworked in the first part of the opening period as the Canadiens played with more urgency. But the Flyers gradually regrouped and took away the play.
The Flyers had a 12-10 shots edge in the first period, and their best scoring chance came while they were shorthanded, but Price denied Kevin Hayes on a breakaway with 6:25 left in the session. Hayes, among several of the Flyers' big guns still looking for his first goal of the postseason, had four shots in the first and finished with seven shots.
