Alain Vigneault knows his way around the season.
He could be a different man if those lights flicker for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and that trophy is up for grabs.
That is not to say that he is not intense or competitive in the regular season, but he understands well and enjoys what is at stake when the calendar turns to the post season.
Everything is repaired a notch.
In the playoffs, Vigneault will not disclose lineup decisions in the days leading up to a matchup. There is a new level of gamesmanship. Plain and simple, Vigneault wants to win. The five-time Jack Adams Award finalist, who now coaches in four busy markets – Montreal, Vancouver, New York and Philadelphia – wants the Stanley Cup. He was a game away from winning it in 2011 with the Canucks, made it back to the Finals in 2013 with the Rangers and owns 12 career playoff spots on his 17-year-old.
If the Cup logo flashes everywhere you look, it does not match.
“At the end of the day, at this point, there are no friends,” Vigneault said Monday. “There are no friends in coaching and there is no need to be friends as players. There is obviously a lot of respect on both sides, but it’s time to play and it’s time to bring it. is what the Flyers and Montreal are trying to do. “
Vigneault’s intensity, competitiveness and mantra of no friends were evident Friday night after the Flyers’ 5-0 loss to the Canadiens in Game 2 of their best-of-seven first-round series.
After the top-seeded Flyers took Game 1, eight-seeded Montreal took over on Friday. And it did not allow. With just over two minutes left in the game and the Canadiens leading comfortably 5-0, Montreal went on to power play. Kirk Muller, who served as head coach of the Canadiens in place of Claude Julien, sent out his first unit of Nick Suzuki, Tomas Tatar, Jonathan Drouin, Shea Weber and Jeff Petry.
Unprompted postgame, Vigneault went out of his way to mark the late tactics of the opposition in a blowout. Suffice it to say that Muller’s decision did not sit well with the Flyers’ bank boss.
I looked there towards the end of the game, where Kirk Muller, they have a 5-0 lead and he puts his no. 1 power play on the ice. We had embarrassed ourselves enough, I do not think we should have been more embarrassed. I will make sure our team is very aware of that next game.
While Vigneault was really peeped, the comment could very well be a motivating tactic for his club, to make a little bad blood in the series for a top-seeded team that might have needed a reason to get angry after rolling by the round robin and won league-wide notoriety. The Flyers just got a bad wake-up call at an appropriate time – early in the series when they were 1-0. Now there is some fuel for her urgency for an answer.
“We kicked our butts today in all facets of the game,” Vigneault said. “They outworked us, they outplayed us, they executed us.
“Playoff hockey is about winning four games. At the moment, the series is tied 1-1. There is no doubt that they will convince us in all facets of tonight’s game, especially in the Test Division. We will have a much better. “
Did Flyers players take notice of Montreal’s first power play unit that hit the ice late in a 5-0 game?
“Everyone sees everything there,” Kevin Hayes said. “That’s her coach’s decision. You have to ask him.”
“Yes, I saw it,” said Claude Giroux, not sounding worried about the move, he said. “No comment on that. We’ll just be worried about the next game here.”
Vigneault certainly means what he said about the declining minutes of a blowout. As you may recall in February, the Flyers had a 5-2 lead over the Panthers and went into the power play with about a minute left in regulation. Vigneault sent out a man-advantage unit from Robert Hagg, Justin Braun, Connor Bunnaman, Michael Raffl and Nicolas Aube-Kubel.
That was the regular season, this is the playoffs. Is there a big difference? We let you be the judge.
There are two sides to every story. Muller had a reasonable reaction when asked about Vigneault’s displeasure with his decision.
“I have a lot of respect, I worked with those coaches, they did a job with their team, they have a good hockey club,” Muller said postgame. “I would never respect anyone. But we’re in the playoffs, you look at the first series against Pittsburgh, our power play was not that great. I felt that if this was the season, it would be a different story, but we do not have practice time here, we have to stay at work.
“I totally understand if that was his comments, I probably expected it, but my job is to make this team as good as it can be at the moment and I had to keep getting on with some of these guys who “I don’t feel productive. I have to focus on our boys in that situation.”
Vigneault was concerned about the loss of the Flyers. He gave credit to the Canadiens. But he also discredited Montreal for that decision over the late game.
The method for a Vigneault-driven playoff push has yet to be witnessed in Philadelphia.
This could just be the beginning.
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