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After Game Seven victories, Canadiens and Flyers clash

Apr 24, 2008 - 1:51 PM Philadelphia at Montreal 7:00 pm EDT Eastern Conference semifinals

MONTREAL (Ticker) - The Montreal Canadiens and Philadelphia Flyers narrowly escaped the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.

Now the top-seeded Canadiens and the sixth-seeded Flyers continue their Stanley Cup pursuit when they meet for Game One of the conference semifinals on Thursday.

Montreal enters the contest following a 5-0 victory against the eighth-seeded Boston Bruins in Game Seven of their quarterfinal matchup on Monday.

The Canadiens won the first two games of the series and forged a three-games-to-one lead before the Bruins rallied back.

However, rookie netminder Carey Price made 25 saves to record his second shutout of the series and Andrei Kostitsyn scored twice in Game Seven to help Montreal advance to the semifinals.

"It was a happy ending," Montreal captain Saku Koivu said. "You have to give credit to our opponents, we lost Games Five and Six and Boston made a series of it."

Price became the fourth rookie netminder in NHL history to record a shutout in a Game Seven while Mike Komisarek, Mark Streit and Sergei Kostitsyn also scored for Canadiens.

"In the playoffs, you always get adversity," Price said. "There isn't a team that won the Stanley Cup that hasn't faced adversity. It's a great character-builder for us."

The Flyers had a much more difficult time during Game Seven against the third-seeded Washington Capitals, who also rallied from a three-games-to-one series deficit.

But, Joffrey Lupul scored a power-play goal at 6:06 of overtime, lifting Philadelphia to a 3-2 victory in Washington on Tuesday.

"Everybody thought we were dead again (on Tuesday), but here we were going into overtime," said Philadelphia's Daniel Briere, who recorded an assist in Game Seven. "We didn't care about what happened previously. It was all about finding a way to get that goal to send us into the next."

The Flyers were winless (0-4-0) in four meetings with the Canadiens during the regular season.