Flyers show a rare sense of resiliency against the Canadiens, a quality they needed more of this season

MONTRÉAL — On Thursday night in their 6-3 victory over the Montréal Canadiens at the Bell Centre, the Flyers displayed something they haven’t shown much of this season: a sense of resiliency.

Nearly a minute after the Flyers pulled ahead, 2-0, early in the first period, chaos ensued in front of the Flyers’ net when a point shot from defenseman Jeff Petry took a bounce off the end boards and defenseman Joel Edmundson tried to clean up the rebound by the left post.

But Jones slid out of the crease as the Flyers attempted to locate the puck in a sea of bodies and clear it from the front of the net. However, winger Brendan Gallagher found it first, using his hand to slide it back to center Mike Hoffman for a tap-in goal to cut the Flyers’ lead to one.

As the replay on the Jumbotron showed the seemingly illegal hand-pass in slo-mo, the Flyers bench erupted with rage. However, the game continued without review.

“I don’t know what the deal was there, if that’s supposed to get reviewed,” winger James van Riemsdyk said after the game. “I don’t think we were allowed to challenge it, but it looked pretty obvious to me. I don’t know if it hit something after he gloved it, but I think it was a pretty clear miss.”

This season, the Flyers have had plenty of matters go against them, from injuries to COVID-19 outbreaks to bad bounces. While every team deals with adversity, the Flyers haven’t always responded well, and their 24-43-11 record is a reflection of that.

But on Thursday, even when the Flyers have shown a penchant for blowing multi-goal leads over the last several weeks, they bent in the face of bad luck, but they did not break.

“It happens, and we responded well and just kept playing and didn’t let it phase us too much,” van Riemsdyk said. “We haven’t done that enough this year, but tonight we were able to just keep playing.”

The Flyers kept playing, but by no means did they start dominating the game. In the next two minutes, the Canadiens outshot the Flyers, 3-0. The Flyers relinquished more momentum to close out the first period when defenseman Travis Sanheim was called for elbowing to send the team to the penalty kill.

But goalie Martin Jones came through when the Flyers needed him most. He denied all but that one shot on goal by the end of the first period, as the Canadiens outshot the Flyers, 9-7.

“I think toward the end of the first period when they got that goal that shouldn’t have been a goal, kind of gave them a little bit of energy, and I think they were pushing toward the end of the first, and I think he made a bunch of key stops there,” said defenseman Ivan Provorov.

The Canadiens began the second period with a minute of power-play time, and while they didn’t score, they were able to sustain the energy they generated on the man advantage. Roughly four minutes after the power play expired, the Canadiens tied the game when center Jake Evans deflected the puck past Jones.

Still, the Flyers kept battling, opting to focus on “the details of the game,” interim coach Mike Yeo said. The next two Flyers goals to help them go up 4-2 by the end of the second period — one from Oskar Lindblom and another from Travis Konecny — came after defensemen made smart plays with the puck to safely move it up the ice and into their forwards’ hands.

“One of the things we talked about before the game is it’s nice that you want to win, but if you go out there and try to win the game by yourself, then odds are, you’re probably not focused on the little details that go into winning hockey games,” Yeo said. “I think that our goals were a good example of just playing the game the right way, whether it’s our execution in our puck support, those situations.”

Of course, the Flyers also took advantage of the Canadiens’ porous defense, plus the underwhelming play of goalie Carey Price (.824 save percentage by the end of the night), who was making his third start of the season.

Still, the Flyers have been horrific on the road this season, going 11-23-5 with a minus-50 goal differential. But Jones’ solid play, especially against odd-man rushes, helped the Flyers stay in the game as he finished the night with 31 saves on 34 shots.

Jones has pushed to finish the season on a relatively strong note — he has posted a save percentage above .900 16 times this season, six of which have come over the last two months alone.

Now the Flyers will look to follow suit in their final four games of the season as they embark upon four games in six nights beginning Sunday at home against their rival Pittsburgh Penguins.

“It’s always been the goal throughout the year, just to make sure we finish on a strong note,” Konecny said. “It was a good game. The effort was there. We let them back in, but it was important how we responded, and guys just kept pushing and we ended up on the right side of things tonight.”