Sam Donnellon: Leino played different game
BY THE END, Ville Leino said, "It was pond hockey out there." Up and down the ice, a nifty drop pass here, a booming shot there, everyone in orange-and-black, it seemed anyway, hacking away at a puck as if there were two boots placed 6 feet from each other, not two metal pipes.
BY THE END, Ville Leino said, "It was pond hockey out there."
Up and down the ice, a nifty drop pass here, a booming shot there, everyone in orange-and-black, it seemed anyway, hacking away at a puck as if there were two boots placed 6 feet from each other, not two metal pipes.
The ease by which the Flyers won last night, a 6-0 victory over Montreal in Game 1 of this Eastern Conference final series, may even have obscured its significance in the long run. After all, hadn't the Canadiens coughed up a similar furball in losing, 6-3, to the Penguins in Game 1 of the last round? Hadn't Washington scored six goals twice in games played in the first round? Hadn't Jaroslav Halak, despite all his postseason and Olympic brilliance, been pulled from games in each of those rounds as ingloriously as he was last night?
And yet maybe this was different, because of whom it was and at what juncture it was. The Flyers do not have the weapons that Washington and Pittsburgh have, have created their offense in the first two rounds much the same way Montreal created its in the first two rounds - blocking shots, creating turnovers from overeager scorers, pushing pucks through scrums in front. Opponents' impatience, most prevalent among the talented scorers faced in their first two rounds, was their friend.
And so there was Leino in the waning seconds of a first-period power play last night, the puck on his stick along the goal line to the right of Halak. Conventional NHL wisdom calls for the puck to be thrown into the slot, into the paint, take your chances with the unpredictable physics of a frozen rubber sphere.
Except that Leino was weaned in Finland, where the teaching is counter-NHL intuitive.
"You wouldn't if it was easy for the goalie," he said. "You're kind of taught to make things happen and that's how I'm used to playing."
So Leino waited and looked, feigned a pass, ultimately took advantage of the exuberance of the Canadiens' talented 21-year-old rookie defenseman, P.K. Subban. Subban went to the ice to block the shot, the way Montreal players had done so often in the first two rounds. Leino held the puck, took a few steps out for a better look, and rifled a puck off the far post.
Braydon Coburn knocked it in from there.
Leino's shot finished off what seemed to be a 20-second clinic on the art of passing. Not one shot, even as the crowd moaned its impatience.
"We just wanted to get inside," Leino said. "They're a team that gives you a little bit of time and then they collapse. We just wanted to get it to the net and attack the rebounds."
So went the formula for goal number one. Goals two and three were scored even-strength, one by James van Riemsdyk in close, one on a blast by Danny Briere from the left side. Simon Gagne blasted one from the right, about the same distance, and Halak went head-down to the locker room with 9 minutes, 53 seconds gone in the second period, behind by four goals.
"They do a great job of limiting," Coburn said afterward. "Trying to make you shoot from places you don't want to shoot. They do a good job of getting in the lanes, and I think they layer their blocks. I thought we did an OK job of changing the angle and getting those pucks through."
"Obviously, they're pretty tight defensively, this team," van Riemsdyk said. "And, obviously, Halak's been unbelievable all playoffs long. You let him get in the zone out there, he can make it a long night for you. We had to keep getting guys in front of him, make his job difficult."
Inserted into the lineup after Jeff Carter's first-round injury, Leino finished with two assists, with over 18 minutes of ice time on 24 shifts. He now has points in five of his last seven games. Coburn, his play so uneven all season, finished with a goal and an assist, his stick, his reach working like a spray of splinters on Montreal's playmakers.
No one is talking about the injury-depleted Flyers anymore.
So was a theme set? A message sent? Montreal solved?
Well, they allowed six goals to Pittsburgh in that first game the last round. And there were those two six-goal games by Washington.
"I think that the other teams were a little bit, they weren't giving the credit to the Canadiens," said Leino. "And they were underdogs and they beat them.
"We won't make that same mistake."
Send e-mail to donnels@phillynews.com.
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