Flyers rout Canadiens in Game 1

"IT'S JUST one game," Simon Gagne said, repeatedly.

Two years ago, it took 12 shots to ruffle the Montreal Canadiens' feathers at the Wachovia Center in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Two years later and one round deeper, it took just two more.

In 2008, the Flyers chased rookie netminder Carey Price after he allowed three goals on 12 shots. Les Canadiens never recovered. The Flyers won that game, 3-2, and ended up advancing to the Eastern Conference finals with four straight wins after dropping the first game in Montreal.

Last time, it was Price. Last night, in the Flyers' first Game 1 at the Wachovia Center in six years, the victim was much more significant.

And no one saw it coming.

The Flyers peppered Montreal's second coming of Patrick Roy, Jaroslav Halak - the man whose name had practically been etched on the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP after he stonewalled Washington and Pittsburgh in the first and second rounds - and booted him from the game after four goals on 14 shots.

With that, the Flyers routed Montreal, 6-0, to take Game 1 of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals series. It was their second-most decisive playoff win in franchise history, falling one goal short of a 7-0 win over Minnesota on May 1, 1980.

"It's easy to look at the score and think it was easy," Flyers coach Peter Laviolette. "Montreal got here for a reason. Game 2 is going to be a battle, it really is. We're glad to get the win and move on but there's lots of room for improvement in our game."

Don't pencil the Flyers into the Stanley Cup finals just yet.

They have three more games to win. And the Canadiens have been here before. Sidney Crosby and the Penguins bounced Halak and the Habs, 6-3, in Game 1 last round. Montreal went on to win in seven games.

"You can win 6-0 or 1-0. It's still just a win," Claude Giroux said. "It's just one game."

Game 2 is tomorrow night at the Wachovia Center before the series shifts to Montreal on Thursday night.

The Flyers are 22-8 in best-of-seven playoff series when winning Game 1. They are also 5-2 in series when they win Game 7 of the previous series.

Last night, the Flyers quickly answered the questions lingering about how they would respond just 48 hours after hiking sports' highest mountain twice. Braydon Coburn whacked in a Ville Leino rebound just 3 minutes, 55 seconds into the first period.

"I think with having just 1 day off in between series was good for us," Blair Betts said. "It really didn't give us a chance to sit back and dwell on what happened last series. We just put it behind us. We had a new team coming in here and a lot of reasons [to be sharp]."

"I thought we had confidence," Mike Richards said. "We just came out slow. As the game went on, I thought we got better. We were very opportunistic."

A defenseman has scored the Flyers' first goal in each of their three series this year - Chris Pronger in New Jersey, Ryan Parent in Boston and Coburn last night. It was Coburn's first goal of the playoffs.

The Flyers were outshot, 13-6, in the first period but that wasn't indicative of the scoring chances and their quality. Overall, they were outshot, 28-25, over three periods.

"I didn't think we were very happy with our first period," Briere said. "Michael Leighton played really well. We were able to come back from the first period with the lead mostly because of him."

The solo shutout was the first of Leighton's career, after combining with Brian Boucher in Game 5 last week against Boston to blank the Bruins.

It didn't take long for the Flyers to capitalize on those chances in the second period. Just 30 ticks into the second period, James van Riemsdyk tucked in a rebound behind Halak's pads after working a give-and-go with linemate Giroux.

It was van Riemsdyk's second goal in as many games, after netting his first-ever playoff goal on Friday night in Boston.

"I never really expected to come out with a game like that," van Riemsdyk said. "Obviously, we were pretty high after that [Game 7]."

Less than 4 minutes later, Danny Briere blasted his eighth goal of the playoff with a laser over Halak's left shoulder as the Flyers began to pour it on. Briere scored as Maxim Lapierre's penalty was expiring.

It took one more goal before Canadiens coach Jacques Martin had seen enough of Halak. With his fourth goal in five games since returning from a fractured right big toe, Gagne did the honors as he skated in from the top of the circle and wristed a puck to the far post. Price entered his fourth playoff game of the year before Game 1 was halfway old, with 10:07 remaining in the second period.

And then the fun started.

Flyers fans derisively mocked the Francophone Canadiens with their sing-songy rendition of "Ole, ole, ole" - a staple at the Bell Centre - and repeated chants of "USA, USA!"

Scott Hartnell and Giroux piled on goals in the third period, further sinking the frustrated Canadiens.

"When you have a five- or six-goal lead, you can kind of let the nerves go a little bit," Betts said. "I think the hardest thing about the third period was trying to keep your mind into it and play as hard as you can. When you have a lead like that, it's sometimes tough to do."

It will be tougher in Game 2.

No one expected a rout, not in a series predicted to be a grind-it-out, heavyweight conference-title fight. But there is still a lot of hockey to be played. Montreal hasn't played less than seven games in a series this year.

"It's just one game," Gagne said. "If you look at the way we played, yeah, we're happy about it. But they're going to be a lot better next game."

Chris Pronger was not on the ice for a single one of the Flyers' six goals. He played just 20:30, his lowest time on ice in the playoffs. Three other Flyers defensemen - Kimmo Timonen, Braydon Coburn and Matt Carle - played more than Pronger last night . . . Dan Carcillo and Simon Gagne paced the Flyers with four shots a piece . . . Montreal blocked four more shots than the Flyers . . . The Flyers outhit the Canadiens, 27-19 . . . The Flyers had just four giveaways, compared to Montreal's 11 . . . Last night was Coburn's first goal in 60 games.

For more news and analysis, read Frank Seravalli's blog, Frequent Flyers, at http://go.philly.com/frequentflyers.