Wayne Simmonds Didn't Seem Too Interested In Making Any Friends In Montreal Last Night
Final Score: Flyers 1, Canadiens 3 | (2-3-1)
Let’s make one thing clear right off the bat. The NHL isn’t the NBA where you’ll see players from different teams taking banana boat excursions with each other in the offseason. The NHL isn’t the NFL where you’ll see players like Odell Beckham Jr and Dez Bryant–who should be bitter rivals–having a tickle party during pregame warmups. No siree. Hockey is quite possibly the only sport left that hasn’t been ruined by millennials. You have your teammates and it’s “fuck the rest of the world” from there. Which is exactly how Wayne Simmonds felt during the Flyers game against Montreal last night. If you’re wondering what the context here is and who Simmonds was yelling at, here’s what happened. A few minutes before this moment, he was called for whatever the fuck penalty the scumbag ref decided to call here.
Weak ass Montreal Canadiens taking weak ass dives. And the ref fell for it so hard. Torrey Mitchell pulls himself down and somehow Simmonds ends up in the box for holding. Egregious. So since hockey is a sport where the players self-police the game, Wayne stepped out of the penalty box and showed the Habs they better never dive again on his watch with this hit on Andrei Markov.
If you pussies want to go down so easily, Wayne Train Simmonds will give you a reason to go down so easily. Not the cleanest hit ever but the refs owed Simmonds one for that outrageous call earlier. But yeah, that put a target on Simmonds’ back after that. So while he was chatting things over with the ref between whistles, I guess Max Pacioretty had something smart to say to Simmer that he didn’t appreciate so much.
He’s not wrong either. Max Pacioretty got to grow up living off of mommy and daddy money in New Canaan, Connecticut. Kids from Connecticut are always total pussies. They have the arrogance of New Yorkers without any of the street cred to back it up.
As for the rest of the game?
It’s clear that Steve Mason is once again the Flyers’ version of Cole Hamels. Stone Cold Steve Mason put on a helluva performance last night. He made 30 saves on 32 shots, and plenty of them were point black like this one right here.
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Even the goals that he let in weren’t hit fault. The Flyers deserved to get the primary and secondary assist on the Habs’ first goal of the night. A Shea Weber shot breaks through Brayden Schenn’s stick, still keeps it’s trajectory toward the net and who else but Andrew “I Fucking Suck Balls” MacDonald is there to set the screen on Mason? Thank god Radko Gudas’ 6-game suspension is up because I need MacDonald out of this lineup like Pres needs new eyeballs.
But even after Mason gave the team opportunity after opportunity to stay in this game, the offense could only muster up one goal. To be fair, that one goal was filthy and reason enough to be happy with last night. But still, Steve Mason has to be pretty frustrated with the boys after last night.
Score-acek
I know Coots went off for a line change before the goal here but words can’t describe how happy this 2nd line makes me. Konecny – Couturier – Voracek is what gives this team life. They’re always generating opportunities, and it’s nice when you can have Jake Voracek out there not having to go up against the other team’s best defensemen because this is the result you get.
That was porn. We’re looking at a top 10 play of the season if he buries that. Voracek was creating space for himself and his linemates all game last night. That’s now 3 goals and 8 points through 6 games so far this year. It took Voracek until mid way through December last year to score 3 goals so yeah, thank god Jake is back.
The Other Guys
– Thought we saw another really good defensive performance from Ivan Provorov last night. He made a few key plays in the team’s own zone, which is still an area where they struggle in especially 5v5. We know that there’s a ton of offensive upside to Provorov’s game but it’s nice to see him growing defensively too.
– Speaking of defensemen who are finding their game–Brandon Manning. What a turnaround he’s made over the past 2 games. You’ll never meet anybody who dislikes Brandon Manning more than myself but just like Rocky said, “If I can change, and yous can change. Then everybody can change”. If I’m Dave Hakstol right now, Brandon Manning has made my decision for me. When MDZ and Gudas come back, it’s gotta be MacDonald and Schultz who watch in their street clothes.
– This quote from Alex Radulov was too good to not include here.
3-point night for Radulov so he definitely deserved that love from the crowd. And “I got the tickles” deserves to be on a tshirt.
See everybody again tonight. 7:30 at home against Buffalo.