5 THINGS: Flyers @ Canadiens

GAME NOTES
Taking a brief trip north of the border, interim head coach Mike Yeo's Philadelphia Flyers (11-12-4) are in Quebec on Thursday to take on Dominique Ducharme's Montreal Canadiens (6-21-3). Game time at the Bell Centre is 7:00 p.m. ET ( NBCSP+, 93.3 WMMR).
This is the first of three meetings this season between the teams, and the first of two in Montreal. The teams will rematch on March 13 at the Wells Fargo Center before the scene shifts back to Montreal on April 21.
The Flyers, after going winless in 10 games (0-8-2), have won three games in a row. On Tuesday, Philadelphia dominated the New Jersey Devils on the way to a 6-1 blowout victory at the Wells Fargo Center. Cam Atkinson led the way with a hat trick and an assist, scoring goals at 4-on-4, 4-on-5 (shorthanded), and 5-on-5. Carter Hart was strong in goal, stopping 26 of 27 shots.
The Canadiens, who have lost four games in a row in regulation, have only one win in their last 10 games (1-8-1). They are coming off a 5-2 road loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday. Second period goals, scored by Jonathan Drouin and then Jesse Ylönen in the waning seconds, temporarily cut deficits of 2-0 and 3-1 to a single goal. Pittsburgh pulled away in the third period.

Here are five things to track in tonight's game:
1. Structure and Transition Game
During the Flyers' losing skid, and even in multiple games before that, the Flyers did not generate many transitional opportunities with their breakouts or neutral zone forecheck. Likewise, their offensive zone forecheck was often beaten with a single pass and created few bang-bang chances off opposition turnovers.
Over the last couple weeks, but especially in Tuesday's blowout of the Devils, the Flyers had a slew of counterattacking opportunities. This, along with finally getting the power play on track, is why the team has scored a combined 20 goals over its last five games (4.00 GPG) after averaging a measly 1.65 goals per game over their previous 17 matches.
It all comes down to what Yeo and most coaches succinctly call "process" or "playing the right way": Strong breakouts, close forward-to-defense gaps, lots of puck pressure on the forecheck and backcheck, and overall cohesion as five-man units are what create the chance to attack with purpose.
Montreal ranks 30th in the NHL with a 3.57 team goals against average. Not coincidentally, the team is 5th from the bottom of the league in terms of puck management, averaging 9.61 giveaways per game. There's an opportunity for the Flyers to have another fruitful night offensively if they execute their game lan in similar fashion to the game against New Jersey.
The Flyers still have things to clean up in terms of their own structure and decision-making. The win in Vegas last Friday was largely a case of Hart stealing a game for the team and the Flyers being opportunistic offensively. The victory in Arizona the next night was an often sloppily played game by both teams, with the Coyotes being the bigger culprit. The game against the Devils was well-played overall by the Flyers, with a few hiccups that Hart helped to cancel out with big saves.
2. Giroux Watch
Flyers captain Claude Giroux is on the brink of achieving a major personal and Flyers franchise milestone. The Flyers scoring leader this season (10g and 14a in 27 games) enters this game with 882 points in his career. His next point will tie him with Hockey Hall of Fame left wing Bill Barber for second on the franchise's all-time scoring leaderboard. Only the iconic Bobby Clarke (1,210 points) racked up more points in his career as a Flyer than Barber or Giroux.
While all eyes will be on Giroux's quest to catch and then surpass Barber's career point total, it's also worth keeping an eye on Giroux's linemates. Coming off his hat trick against the Devils, Atkinson holds the Flyers' goal-scoring lead this season with 12 tallies among his 19 overall points. Atkinson has scored five goals in his last six games.
Due to the rules of the NHL's COVID-19 protocol, Morgan Frost had to be removed from Tuesday's game after the results of a test earlier that day became known. He left the game immediately after he skated his third shift of the first period. Oskar Lindblom moved up from fourth-line left wing to skate on the line with Giroux and Atkinson. Lindblom responded with his second goal of the season (both within the last five games) and an assist.
Frost remained in COVID protocol as of Wednesday and was ineligible to travel with the team to Montreal. As a result, the revised line of Lindblom with Giroux and Atkinson remains intact.
Due to the absences of Frost, Derick Brassard (hip), and Joel Farabee (shoulder), the Flyers recalled Jackson Cates on an emergency basis from the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Cates was briefly recalled last week but did not dress in a game. He'll be in the lineup in Montreal, skating at LW4.
Cates dressed in four NHL games for the Flyers last season (0g, 1a) as a fourth-line forward after turning professional and being signed by Philadelphia after his junior year at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. This season, after being one of the last cuts from the Flyers during NHL training camp, he has dressed in 19 games in the American Hockey League for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (2g, 4a).
With the Phantoms this season, Cates has primarily seen fourth-line and penalty killing duties. Both of his AHL goals this season have been shorthanded tallies, including a perfectly executed shorthanded breakaway for his first career professional goal.Cates moved up in the Phantoms lineup recently after Frost was recalled to Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, both halves of the defensive pair of Travis Sanheim and Rasmus Ristolainen are coming off an outstanding performance, both individually and in working together as a duo, in the New Jersey game. Sanheim also finally notched his previously elusive first goal of the 2021-22 season; four years to the day from when he scored his first career NHL goal.
Here's the Flyers projected lineup, with Hart making his fourth start in goal for the team in a five-game span:
21 Scott Laughton- 14 Sean Couturier- 11 Travis Konecny
23 Oskar Lindblom- 28 Claude Giroux-89 Cam Atkinson
71 Max Willman - 13 Kevin Hayes- 25 James van Riemsdyk
59 Jackson Cates - 38 Patrick Brown - 17 Zack MacEwen
9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
7 Travis Sanheim - 70 Rasmus Ristolainen
3 Keith Yandle - 8 Kevin Connauton
79 Carter Hart
[35 Martin Jones]
3. Inside the Numbers
The Canadiens have hemorrhaged 5-on-5 goals all season, coming in a team minus-20 (44 GF/ 64 GA). Combine that with the NHL's 31st ranked combined special teams (83.8 index, with a 31st-ranked 12.8 percent power play and 30th-ranked 71.0 percent penalty kill) and it becomes abundantly clear why the team is the Eastern Conference cellar and ahead only of the Arizona Coyotes in the leaguewide standings.
The Flyers still have a way to go to make a significant dent in their own unfavorable numbers in terms of unfavorable puck possession and shot quality underlying numbers. They've had things their way in their most recent two games, and have an opportunity to further it against the struggling Habs. Nevertheless, genuine progress must be accomplished over a significantly larger sample size. There's still much work to be done, process-wise.
4. Behind Enemy Lines: Montreal Canadiens
A surprise Stanley Cup finalist last season after unexpectedly winning a playoff qualification round in the Bubble in 2020 and throwing a scare into the Flyers in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinal, the Canadiens have suffered major losses to their roster since last season. The absences of Shea Weber and Carey Price have been felt in a variety of different ways. The team also lost Jesperi Kotkaniemi to a restricted free agent offer sheet from the Carolina Hurricanes. More recently, the Canadiens had an extensive front-office purge. After seemingly being a team on the rise, the Canadiens have been embroiled in turmoil amid what has been a disastrous season on the ice.
Nick Suzuki, who punished the Flyers and also got under their skin by taunting Hart during the 2020 playoff series between the teams, leads the Canadiens in scoring this season with 18 points (6g, 12a). More is expected, however, especially with the player coming off 41 points (15g, 26a) in 56 games played last season. Suzuki hasn't been the problem. The issue is that the team as a whole has lacked depth and, collectively, most of the roster has struggled.
No player on the Canadiens has scored more than seven goals this season. Josh Anderson has tallied seven times this season among his 12 points. More is expected from Tyler Toffoli (5g, 12a), Drouin (5g, 11a), veteran Brendan Gallagher (4g, 6a in 23 games), young sniper Cole Caufield (1g, 5a in 22 games, briefly assigned to the AHL's Laval Rocket earlier this season) and others.
Veteran goalie Jake Allen (23 GP, 5-15-2 record, 3.10 GAA, .903 save percentage, two shutouts) has done what he can to keep his team in games but it's been an uphill battle all season in the absence of Price. A big part of the issue has been that the team's defense corps lost its heart-and-soul leadership from erstwhile No. 1 defenseman Weber. The Canadiens lacks both a bonafide offensive threat and a true top-end shutdown defender. As a result, the team has been forced to play veterans Jeff Petry (23:14 TOI, age 34), Ben Chiarot (23:26 TOI) and David Savard (20:07 TOI) -- all solid and proven pros -- more minutes than would be ideal at this stage of their respective careers.
The Habs did get a little bit of good news this week. On Wednesday, they announced that veteran winger Gallagher and former Winnipeg defenseman Sami Niku have exited NHL COVID-19 protocol. Both will participate in graded exercise to ramp up to full-fledged practice before rejoining the team in game action next week.
5. Players to Watch: Konecny and Romanov
Over the last 10 days, the Flyers have had various players who were mired in deep offensive slumps start to emerge and begin to score goals again after lengthy droughts. Travis Konecny has begun to collect some assists again (five helpers in his last five games), shoot the puck with more frequency (10 SOG in that span, excluding one that James van Riemsdyk tipped home for a power play goal) and get under opponents' skin again.
The process seems to back on track for the player. The next step would be to get back in the goal scoring column. Konecny last scored 13 games ago (Nov. 18 against Tampa Bay) and has only one goal in his last 18 games. TK, who started the season with four goals and eight points in the first nine games, seems to finally be on the brink of a goal-scoring breakthrough but the payoff needs to come sooner rather than later.
Amid what has been a highly disappointing season for the Canadiens, the team has seen some progress from 21-year-old defenseman Alexander Romanov. The club's 2018 second-round-pick (38th overall), has thrown his 210-pound frame around for 93 hits and also blocked 40 opposing shots.