By Harry Allison
Nolan Patrick’s got his mojo back.
He scored two goals in the third period, and the visiting Flyers won their third straight game, 5-2 against the Montreal Canadiens.
Carter Hart made 33 saves in his fifth consecutive start for Philly (19-23-6), which is 4-1-0 in five games since an eight-game losing streak (0-7-1).
“It means a lot for us,” said Hart, who got his first NHL road win in four starts. “When we were losing, that’s not a fun thing to go through but guys kept their spirits up and they were very positive. And when we were losing it wasn’t by much; it was just like one or two couple of bounces. And now those bounces are starting to go our way and we’re starting to force their hand and make sure they’re going our way by playing 60-minute hockey.”
Travis Konecny scored his 12th goal for his 100th NHL point at 17:01 of the second period. He got his 101st point 1:33 later with an assist on James van Riemsdyk’s 12th goal.
The Flyers don’t play again until Jan. 28.
“Obviously that’s a huge win for us before the break,” Patrick said.
Antti Niemi made 19 saves for Montreal (27-18-5), which lost the second of back-to-back games to end a season-long four-game winning streak.
The Canadiens, who outshot the Flyers 12-1 in the first period, failed to score on their only power play of the game in the second. Montreal is 20-for-159 with the man-advantage (12.6 percent), which ranks worst in the NHL.
“We’re not a threat on the power play, especially tonight,” Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. “We got a little bit better in the last few games where we had some, but tonight was one power play and it was a dead one.”
Konecny gave Philadelphia a 1-0 lead when he scored from the slot on a rebound of Shayne Gostisbehere’s shot.
Van Riemsdyk made it 2-0 at 18:34 of the second when he tipped in Robert Bagg’s shot from the point for his sixth goal in five games.
Patrick scored his eighth goal at 7:06 of the third period to make it 3-0.
Max Domi made it 3-1 when he scored at 7:36 of the third. but Patrick responded with his second of the game at 9:32 to make it 4-1.
Brett Kulak made it 4-2 with his third goal at 16:00.
“I don’t know what it was,” Canadiens defenseman Shea Weber said. “We definitely had a great start. Maybe they got going a little bit after that. It’s hard to say what exactly it was, but they got themselves going somehow and it was too late by the time we got going.”
Michael Raffl scored into an empty net with 52 seconds remaining for the 5-2 final.
