The high-flying Montreal Canadiens (12-4-1) hope to win their fifth straight Saturday night as they host a Philadelphia Flyers (7-6-2) team that has beat them often in recent years.

The Flyers have manhandled the Canadiens 10-3-1 in their last 14 encounters, although the Habs took the last decision in a wild 4-3 comeback won in a shootout in Philadelphia in their third game of the season, on October 11.

"We didn’t like our start last game in Philly," said Habs defenceman Nathan Beaulieu. "They started three nothing then we came back in the third. We don’t want to do that again. The same result would be good but we want to get off to a good start.”

The Flyers visit Montreal one night after losing 4-3 at home to Columbus, a team that had lost nine straight.

Meanwhile the Habs are tied with the Anaheim Ducks for the best record in the entire league with 25 points in 17 games and are 7-2-0 at home.

And while the Habs have had seen some impressive contributions from Czechs Jiri Sekac and Tomas Plekanec this season, the Flyers are led by fellow-Kladno native Jakub Voracek who is just one point behind Sidney Crosby for the NHL scoring lead.

The 25-year-old right winger is off to his best-ever start, racking up seven goals and 17 assists in 15 games for the Flyers who are averaging just over three goals a game.

The Canadiens have scored a relatively low 45-goals in 17 games – good only for 17th best in the league – but have outscored opponents 13-3 during their last four outings.

Max Pacioretty and Lars Eller scored three of those goals while Sekac has a pair.

"This is the game we've been searching for a while," Pacioretty said following the Canadiens' 5-1 win over the Boston Bruins Thursday. "We've been relying too much on (goaltender) Carey Price the last couple of games. It feels really good to put some in for him and take some pressure off him for once."

The Habs broke a stretch of 27 straight power plays without scoring in their 5-1 win over Boston Thursday. The Canadiens' 28th ranked power play is expected to improve with the recent acquisition of Sergei Gonchar, a 40-year-old defenceman who joined the club from Dallas in exchange for Travis Moen.

The Habs will hope to score with the man advantage as the Flyers are just 25th in the league in killing penalties and gave up three goals to Columbus while one man down Friday.

The Flyers have a veteran defence corps that is ranked 17th in goals against. Former Hab Mark Streit, now 36, anchors a blueline that includes Luke Schenn, 25, Michael Del Zotto, 24, Nicklas Grossman, 29 and Nick Schultz, 32.

Starting goaltender Ray Mason has a .911 save percentage and a 3.02 goals against average while backup Ray Emery has a .915 save percentage and a 2.74 goals against average.

Carey Price is expected to get the call in nets for the Canadiens, while Dustin Tokarski is expected to start in the next game in Detroit Sunday.