Flyers show resiliency

Give the Flyers this much – they have the ability to come back from lopsided defeats.

The two biggest defeats of the year were followed by wins with the most recent example Thursday's 2-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens at the Wells Fargo Center.

That followed a 7-2 demolition at Chicago on Wednesday which ended a 2-3-1 road trip.

On Nov. 1, the Flyers lost 7-0 at home to Washington, only to score a 1-0 victory the next night at New Jersey.

Even on the six-game road trip, they followed a 5-1 loss in Dallas by earning a point in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators.

"There is a lot of charter in the room and they certainly weren't happy about that loss to Chicago," coach Craig Berube said.

As the defending Stanley Cup champion that entered Thursday with the most points in the NHL, Chicago is the measuring stick for every team.

"They wanted to show they could compete with that team," Berube said. "It didn't work out the way they wanted it to, but there was a lot of character, and a good win tonight."

As tired as they were coming off a 13-day road trip and getting in around 3 a.m., the Flyers were happy to return on the ice so quickly because they wanted to rid themselves of the sour taste the Chicago game left.

"it's good especially to get to play next day," said Claude Giroux, who was named the game's No. 1 star after assisting on the first goal by Michael Raffl and scoring the second. "I think for us to play the next day it was good, we don't have to think about Chicago and just go right back at it."

And that is what they did.

"I think that was one of our best 60-minute performances," Giroux said.

Raffl was inserted on the top line with Giroux and Jake Voracek and provided a major spark.

"Actually G (Giroux) texted me in the afternoon that I was going to play with him so I took a great nap and came here ready to play," Raffl said.

He sure did, and so did his teammates.

Another key was the Flyers stayed out of the penalty box. Montreal had just one power play opportunity.

So it was a truly impressive bounce-back win.

Now the next step is to avoid the lopsided losses so there is no need for such a drastically different performance the next game.

-Marc Narducci