With Game 2 barely over, Vigneault plays another game

Alain Vigneault had just watched his hockey club play too slowly, react too indifferently, shoot too infrequently and work just hard enough to lose a playoff game. In his profession, and he has been around it long enough to know every trick, that meant he’d face a selection of three responses.

The first, acceptable but a touch defeatist, would be to hit the delete button on the film machine and pretend the Flyers’ 5-0 loss to the Montreal Canadiens in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals was a hockey quirk. In some ways, it was. One Habs goal ricocheted off Shayne Gostisbehere’s skate. Another was the result of a power play that came on a penalty to Gostisbehere that should not have been called. Another, from Tomas Tatar, clanged off the post and in.

Carey Price, one of the best goalies of his generation, was splendid. Carter Hart, who may be one of the best goalies of his generation, found himself without his stick during one Montreal score. Hockey happened. So forget about it.

That, though, was not Vigneault’s choice.

The second option, acceptable but a touch reactionary, would have been to commence tipping dressing-room laundry bins and order the Flyers back to the bubble for an all-night film festival. But it was his opinion that the Canadiens, not the Flyers, played with what he called more “will.” If so, there wasn’t an X or an O he could scribble that would have changed that.

So that wasn’t his choice, either.

All of which led to Option No. 3. And wouldn’t the hockey fans of North America be delightfully entertained for its beauty? That option, pinballing around NHL postseasons since the goalies didn’t wear masks on the ice let alone off, was to take some sort of in-game situation and twist it into a go-towar issue.

Did Vigneault choose that one?

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

Of course he did.

“I saw toward the end of the game there,” Vigneault said, drawing the everbloodthirsty to the edge of their socially distant chairs and introducing the name of the Habs’ interim head coach. “Kirk Muller was there, and he has a fivenothing lead, and he puts his first power-play on the ice.”

Here it comes … duck! “We had embarrassed ourselves enough. I don’t think we needed to get embarrassed there more,” Vigneault said. “So I’m going to make sure our team is very aware of that next week.”

That slight, if that’s what it was, came with 2:20 left when Nicolas Aube-Kubel went off for slashing. Muller is filling in for Claude Julien, who has encountered heart trouble, and maybe the former NHL All-Star player was a little over-anxious to impress. But he was a top-flight NHL player for a lot of years and had previously been the head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes, so it wasn’t like he was trying to pass some professional audition. Just the same, Muller ran a bunch of good players onto the ice, and Vigneault had a brainstorm: Use it for motivation.

Given that the Flyers weren’t overwhelming in their Game 1 victory and that they were behind by a goal 1:02 into Game 2, maybe Vigneault’s ire, manufactured or otherwise, will resonate. Dragged into the controversy later, Claude Giroux at first seemed disinterested in the topic. But given a second or two to allow it to marinate, the caption knew how to take the cue.

“I saw it,” Giroux said of Muller’s inconsiderate batting order. “But no comment on that. We just have to win the next game here.”

As shots go, Giroux’s pointed “no comment” was the best one he’d taken in a while. Vigneault alluded to that, too, stressing that if a long postseason run is going to happen, “the top players have to drive the bus.”

The Flyers have to be in the right position to score goals, too, no matter where the bus is parked. Vigneault knows that, and he is a good enough coach to figure something out. The Flyers lost a game Friday, not a series. Vigneault, twice the coach of Stanley Cup finalists, knows how to send a signal. He tried one earlier Friday, pulling Hart with two minutes left in the second. Brian Elliott was OK in the third. But by then, it was too late.

And then … and then … and then Kirk Muller dropped Vigneault a gift, one dipped in disrespect. If the Flyers hadn’t noticed it themselves, they were made aware that Vigneault had turned it into a cause, waiting until his video press briefing was just about over before throwing it out there to create a stir.

“Yeah, I mean everyone sees everything out there,” Kevin Hayes said. “That’s their coach’s decision. Ask him.”

It will be asked, answered, asked, answered and converted into pure hockey fuel before Game 3, scheduled for Sunday night at 8. It’s the way it is done in hockey, where any best-of-seven series will include some shred of illwill morphed it into something larger. Friday, the Flyers had their selection. Hart was run into and a fight ensued. Vigneault mentioned more than once that his players needed to play harder. And then, there was Kirk Muller being rude enough to try to run a five-goal lead up to a half-a-dozen.

The nerve?

“We have guys who are hungry for success,” Matt Niskanen said. “We had a bit of a blunder today.” It may be that simple. Alain Vigneault, who found a most hockey-like way to address that energy shortage, seems to think so.