Montreal Canadiens Blog

Tonight the Flyers and Canadiens will kick of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in true form, as Montreal plays at home where they dominated the Bruins in game seven last Saturday. Look for this series to be no easier then the first even though Montreal has won all four meetings this season.

Look for Briere to really making an impact as he has been really host in the post-season leading the playoffs in goals and points. Our powerplay should be a lot better this series as Philadelphia hasn’t played enought games against us to be used to our powerplay yet, but don’t expect to see it be a domination all series. The Canadiens Penalty Kill has been one of the best in the playoffs thus far which will be very important against this skilled Flyers lineup.

The key in tonights game is for Montreal to come out swinging, and by swinging I mean working as hard as possible. Philadelphia played their last game against Washington on Tuesday night so that haven’t had a whole lot of rest between games. If we can out work them from the get go we’ll have a good shot at taking the first game of the series, which is very imoprtant in my opinion, especially at home.

This should be a good game and real testament to how hard both teams have worked up to this point. We need to make sure we don’t underestimate them as we did in the first round against Boston and this should be a series won in six games by the Habs.

Injuries

Mike Knuble was injured in Game 7 after falling awkwardly into the boards from a hit by Mike Green of Washington. He won’t play in tonights game but hopes to be back sometime in the series. Grabovski is still listed as Day-to-Day with the flu, but I’m not sure how accurate that actually is.

Changes

The two lines of the Montreal Canadiens are still shaken up with Kovalev playing with Koivu on the top line, and the Kostitsyn brothers playing on the second line with Plekanec centering.

Playoff Series: Tied 0-0

Team logos graciously provided by NHL Tournament of Logos.

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Montreal Canadiens
Offensive Lineup
Chris Higgins	Saku Koivu	Alex Kovalev
Andrei Kostitsyn	Tomas Plekanec	Sergei Kostitsyn
Steve Begin	Bryan Smolinski	Tom Kostopoulos
Mark Streit	Maxim Lapierre	Mathieu Dandenault
Defensive Lineup
Andrei Markov		Mike Komisarek
Roman Hamrlik		Patrice Brisebois
Josh Gorges		Francis Bouillon
Starting Goalie
Carey Price
Backup Goalie
Jaroslav Halak

Philadelphia Flyers
Offensive Lineup
Joffrey Lupul	Daniel Briere	Vaclav Prospal
Scott Hartnell	Mike Richards	Sami Kapanen
Scottie Upshall	Jeff Carter	R.J. Umberger
Patrick Thoresen	Jim Dowd	Steve Downie
Defensive Lineup
Kimmo Timonen		Braydon Coburn
Derian Hatcher		Randy Jones
Lasse Kukkonen		Jason Smith
Starting Goalie
Martin Biron
Backup Goalie
Antero Niittymaki

Category: Game Information