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PHILADELPHIA — The Montreal Canadiens can crow all they want about how the final scores have not been indicative of how well they have played against the Philadelphia Flyers.
But they can't conceal the reason they suffered a 4-2 loss last night: mistakes at inopportune times.
The Canadiens, who now trail 3-1 in the best-of-seven, second-round NHL playoff series, with the fifth game at the Bell Centre in Montreal on Saturday, buried themselves last night with two costly third-period blunders that helped the Flyers to their third win in a row.
First, Montreal forward Andrei Kostitsyn threw a blind backhand pass into centre ice, which allowed Flyers counterpart Vaclav Prospal to quickly transition the turnover into a Scott Hartnell rebound goal and a 2-0 lead for Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Flyers forward Danny Briere is hoisted off the ice by Mike Richards after he scored in the third period Wednesday night. (Tom Mihalek/Associated Press)
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Then, after the Canadiens battled back to tie the score with goals from Tomas Plekanec and Saku Koivu 37 seconds apart, Montreal's robust forward Steve Begin was whistled for a borderline interference penalty on Flyers veteran Sami Kapanen in the neutral zone.
Kapanen had made a pass, skated a couple of strides and then was nailed by Begin. Kapanen fell awkwardly to the ice.
Philadelphia's Daniel Brière made Begin pay for his sin as Brière scored his fifth game-winning goal in 11 playoff games this spring with 3 minutes 38 seconds remaining.
Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau didn't like the referee's interpretation of the play. He felt that type of penalty was not consistently called the entire game. He also added the Flyers likely got the call because they had complained the day before about not getting a fair shake of the penalties called.
"I don't want to get fined," Carbonneau said when asked about the Begin penalty. "You watch the whole game and you tell me after [what you think]. There were enough things written in the paper [yesterday]."
The Begin penalty was called right in front of Montreal veteran forward Bryan Smolinski.
"Steve's a physical player and he was just trying to finish his check," Smolinski said. "I can't say it was a great call, but [the referee] was just doing his job."
Other than the Kostitsyn and Begin mistakes, the Canadiens have been doing their job pretty well, too.
They received strong goaltending last night from Jaroslav Halak, the surprise starter, who learned before the morning skate that he would replace struggling Carey Price. Halak played well enough and gained the confidence of his teammates when he stopped Flyers centre Jeff Carter on a short-handed breakaway early in the game.
The Canadiens also continued to fire shot after shot at red-hot Philadelphia goalie Martin Biron, who was raised in Lac-Saint-Charles, Que., and cheered for the nearby Quebec Nordiques and against the hated Canadiens.
Montreal has outshot the Flyers 142-96 in the four games, but haven't discovered the scoring touch that allowed them to lead the league in goals in the regular season.
Last night, the Canadiens put 38 shots on Biron, but missed the net on 20 occasions and saw the Flyers block 19 more shot attempts.
"It's frustrating, obviously," Carbonneau said. "We just lost three games and I can't sit there with the coaching staff and try to change things or the way we play tactically. We are playing great. We have scoring chances and we don't give too much, but we lost the game.
"Biron is on top of his game right now," the coach said.
"Whether he's lucky, or good or extremely good, he is making the saves that are part of the hockey game. … We have to find a way. We've been able to pierce them in the third period. We need to find a way in the first and second period, early so we can get our confidence back."
After a scoreless opening 20 minutes, the Flyers got the game's first goal for the fifth game in a row when R.J. Umberger scored on the power play.
Umberger also added an empty-netter with less than a minute left in the game for his sixth goal of the series.
