Niittymaki gives Habs a win

Once again it was goaltending that determined a win for the Habs. Unfortunately, tonight it was the Niittymaki who gave the Habs a 4-3 win in over time.

Well, I didn't think I'd be in such a good mood after the game judging by how dismal the first 10 minutes were. Within 30 seconds the Flyers had scored when Halak couldn't control a rebound and Komisarek decided to do some serious interfering on his own goalie (or at least it looked that way to me). I was swearing and my mood wasn't improved at all when the Habs defense went to sleep and the Flyers scored again. And then Niittymaki decided that the Habs were going to win this and let in three goals in about two minutes. Pleky scored when the Flyers defense lost the puck right in front of Niittymaki. Niittymaki made things nice when Kostopoulos drove to net and while Andrew Alberts was fumbling with the puck, Niitty took his sweet time coming back to the net and whoopsies Tom puts the puck into the pretty much empty net. Oops. And finally, Kovy took a shot on Niitty who was pretyt fair out and it bounced off his shoulder and into the net.

Of course things had to get worse when the Habs came off a powerplay and Brisebois got knocked off the puck at the Flyers blueline and Gagne basically went in alone on Halak and scored. Yeah. At least they didn't get scored on while on the powerplay. Although there were a lot of times when that looked possible. Then again, this IS the Flyers we're talking about. They like to score shorthanded. I was more surprised that the Flyers failed score both on the powerplay (including on TWO 5 on 3 chances) and shorthanded. Schneider sunk the Flyers in OT when the Habs got a powerplay when Upshall got sent off for interfering with Jaro. He pulled an Ovechkin move and banged into the glass. I still think nobody does it like Ovie *G*

I'm still trying to figure out what's happened here. The whole game was bizarre even taking away from the fact the whole Metropolit thing. Carbo thought it was a good idea to put Glen Metropolit in the lineup despite the fact that only a few hours earier the guy was still a Flyer. The Habs had moments of absolute awfulness but on the other hand, the Flyers - with particular emphasis on Mr. Niittymaki - also had signs of signs of awfulness which lead to Habs goals. On a whole the Flyers played better and if they hadn't been so crappy on the powerplay then we'd probably seeing a very different game. The Habs did do well on the penalty kill (c'mon, we can't give all the credit to the Flyers for stinking) and they at least made an effort to win. They put effort into the game instead of throwing up their hands and quitting when the Flyers got two stupid goals on them. That is good. Now just do something about that defense....Brisebois is killing me, Komisarek is looking terrible...and I'm too pooped to continue with all the defense's problems...

All in all, it was a weird game but I won't deny for a second that I love to see the Flyers lose to the Habs. I love it. Sorry. Hope Danny was watching.