Ailing Flyers Hit Road, Start Win Streak

Sometimes all it takes is a road trip for a struggling team to turn their fortunes around.

After losing 4-1 at the Wachovia Center to the Florida Panthers on December 21st, the Philadelphia Flyers were in a dreadful 3-13-1 skid and free falling out of playoff contention.  They had just finished an 0-2-1 mini-home stand, and were just 1-6-1 in their last 8 home games.  Philadelphia stood next to last in the entire NHL standings, with only the Carolina Hurricanes with less than their 32 points.  Not surprisingly, the Philly faithful were booing their team very loudly on a regular basis.  The Wachovia Center cannot be a fun place to play when in the throes of a major slump.  At least not for the home team, that is.

The result is the players grip their sticks a little tighter and over-thinking every move will result in something negative.

So the Flyers hit the road to begin a 6-game road trip.  It was learned that the laceration that goaltender Brian Boucher suffered on his finger in the loss to the Panthers would put him on the shelf for a a week or more.  Boucher did not make the trip with the team, so Michael Leighton would be getting the starts in net.  When they arrived in Tampa Tuesday, their bad fortune was further accentuated when they learned there was a sewage leak at the St. Pete Times Forum, and the Flyer players would not able to practice.

Their opponents Wednesday were the Lightning, a team that had given Philadelphia fits over through the middle portion of the decade.  But the Flyers had taken 3 of their last 4 and 4 of their last 6 against TB.

The first two periods of the game were a microcosm of the Philadelphia season thus far.  Period one saw the Flyers doing all of the things that make them successful.  They were forechecking with a purpose and were getting puck pursuit on their dump-and-chase offense, getting to the puck first and creating scoring chances.  And most importantly, they did not allow the Lightning any opportunities on the power play.  On the strength of goals by Blair Betts and Mike Richards, Philadelphia had taken control of the game and led 2-0 after one.  Just like the beginning of the Flyers season, a very good start to the game.

The second frame was a struggle from the opening face off.  The Philadelphia forwards weren’t working hard at all…dumping the puck into the offensive zone looked like they were just content to turn over possession of the puck as there was no pursuit whatsoever.  They were hanging back instead of forechecking, letting the Tampa Bay defensemen bring the puck out of the zone and make decent outlet passes.  The Lightning forwards were hitting the Flyer blue line at high speeds and TB carried the play.  Philadelphia took all 3 penalties in the period and momentum completely swung in the Lightnings favor.  They outshot Philly 14-4 in the second and got goals from unlikely sources, Zenon Konopka’s 1st of the year and rookie defenseman Victor Hedman’s 3rd.  Heading into the third, it was tied at 2-all.  Just like their season, the the Flyers experienced a total collapse.

But Philadelphia didn’t just allow another one to slip away as the third period resembled the first in more ways than one.  The forwards were again ferocious in their puck pursuit in every area of the ice, and once again it was goals by Betts and Richards that staked the Flyers to a late 4-2 lead.  When Simon Gagne netted an empty-netter, Philly had come away with a much needed 5-2 win.

After the Christmas break, next up for the Orange and Black was the Carolina Hurricanes, the only team lower in the Eastern Conference standings than the Flyers.

On goals by Richards and Jeff Carter, coupled with a fantastic goal-saving dive to by Matt Carle on a shot that had squeezed through Leighton and was headed into the net, Philadelphia held a 2-0 lead heading into the third.

When Hurricanes defenseman Joni Pitkanen took a cross-checking penalty, Danny Briere scored to make it 3-0 midway through the final stanza.  It looked like the Flyers were going to cruise to their first consecutive victories in 6 weeks, but Carolina had other plans.

Before the Flyers had stopped celebrating Briere’s goal, Jussi Jokinen scored just 24 seconds later to give the Hurricanes some life.  The Flyer forwards stopped skating again, and when Scott Hartnell took a hooking penalty, Carolina capitalized with the man advantage.  Pitkanen dumped the puck into the Flyer zone from his side of the center ice red line and appeared like Braydon Coburn would touch up for the icing call.  But somehow Hurricane forward Brandon Sutter was able to get around Coburn, take the puck that had just rebounded off of the back boards, and beat Leighton to pull Carolina within one with just over 4 minutes left in regulation time. The Hurricanes were swarming the Flyer net, and Jokinen, standing at the left side of the Flyer net, was able to knock home a rebound of an Eric Staal shot.  It was hard to believe that Philadelphia had built a 3-0 lead at the 9:00 of the third, and the game was now tied at 3-3 with 3:13 left in regulation.  Carter took a high-sticking penalty at the 19:00 mark, so Carolina had the chance they needed to win the game.  Even if they didn’t score in regulation, the power play would carry over a minute into overtime.  When the horn sounded to end regulation, the Flyers had survived.  There was a hurricane of 20 Carolina shots in the third, and the game was headed for sudden-death.

After the Flyers killed off the last minute of the Carter minor, they carried play and eventually outshot the Hurricanes, 7-2 in OT.  But no one could score in the extra session, so the game would go to a shootout.  Philadelphia has been awful in shootouts not only this season, but historically they have lost far more than they have been able to win.  To give you an idea of just how frustrating the shootout has become for the Flyer shooters, their last shootout was against the Penguins on December 17th at the Wachovia Center.  The Flyer shooters that night were Briere and Claude Giroux, and after each had made 100 moves to deke Marc-Andre Fleury, neither ended up even getting a shot on goal.

However, this night would be different.  Carolina elected to shoot first, and their first two shooters were Tuomo Ruutu and Jokinen, two of the players with the most success since the inception of the shootout.  There was a school of thought that the ‘Canes shooters may have an advantage against Leighton, who had been claimed by the Flyers off of waivers from the Hurricanes on December 15th, since they used to practice breakaways on their former goalie.  But it worked in Leighton’s favor as he stopped both Ruutu and Jokinen.  Briere and Richards each beat Cam Ward with their patented trademark moves.  Briere likes to fake going to the backhand then move to the forehand and tuck the puck between the goaltenders outstretched pad and the post along the ice.  Richards dekes going to the forehand then slide a quick backhander between the goalies pads as they are moving across the crease to guard the far post.  Both moves require the skater to close in on the goaltender with speed, and both were executed to perfection.

For the first time in 6 weeks, the Philadelphia Flyers had won two games in a row.

Last night the road trip took the Flyers to Long Island too take on the New York Islanders, a team that Philadelphia had beaten the previous 12 times.  The Flyers saw a similar streak against the Atlanta Thrashers snapped during their recent slide, so there has been nothing automatic for this team as of late.  It should also be noted that during the team’s horrific 3-13-1 skid, 2 of those 3 wins had come at the hand of the Islanders.

Complicating matters further for Philadelphia was that due to the weather, they did not arrive on Long Island until 3:30 a.m., less than 14 hours before the opening face off was to take place.

But it didn’t take them long to build a lead after the opening drop of the puck.  Briere took a pass from Carter and buried it, giving the visitors a 1-0 lead just 1:51 into the contest.

The Isles tied it up less than 4 minutes into the second, as defenseman Mark Streit appeared to hit the puck with a high-stick the the blue line to Jon Sim, and Sim proceeded to light the lamp and knot the game at 1-1.  But with just over 3 minutes left in the second frame, the Carter-Briere-Hartnell line struck again.  This time it was Carter finishing off a 2-on-1 with Hartnell for his 14th of the year.  The line appeared to give the Flyers a 2-goal cushion in the third as Briere scored again off of a 2-on-1.  Briere took the initial shot and followed the puck to the net.  The puck snuck through Isles’ goalie Martin Biron and hit the left goalpost, where it hit an unsuspecting Briere in the skate and trickled over the goal line.  But after a video review it was somehow determined that Briere, who had been pushed into the goal post by an Islander defender and had his head raised and looking upwards, had used a distinct kicking motion to deflect the puck into the net.  Briere later said “I was laughing because I thought for sure there was no kicking.  I had no clue the puck even touched my skate.”  At any rate, the Philadelphia defense did their job, including killing off two Islander power plays in the final frame.  The Flyers had won a 3rd straight game for the first time in two months.  Goaltender Michael Leighton won a third straight decision for the first time in his 80 game-long NHL career.

While there are a lot of positives to build on for this team, they also have to remember a few things.  The three teams that they just beat are all in the bottom half of the Eastern Conference standings and if the season ended right now, they would all miss the playoffs.  Had they played like they did in that third period against Carolina against a team like Chicago, Washington, New Jersey or Pittsburgh, they would have been hammered and surely suffered defeat.  With the team playing decently in goal and on defense, they have to make sure that the forwards are doing their share…working hard, back checking and forechecking.  This issue seems to be pretty much of a constant.  It appears that as long as the forwards are chipping in with their fair share, the Flyers give themselves a chance to win games.  Defenseman Kimmo Timonen echoed this point when asked what the team was doing right lately:  “I have to give credit to the forwards who have been working and skating.  When they do that, we win games, and when they don’t, we struggle.  The last three games we’ve been skating and working hard and that makes us win games.”

But suddenly there is a lot of momentum to build on for this team that has been struggling mightily over the past 2 months.  Just when it appeared they might fall into oblivion and were awaiting GM Paul Holmgren’s notification that a trade or trades had been completed, the Flyers have picked themselves up off of the canvas and seem like they’re finally buying into head coach Peter Laviolette’s aggressive, puck pursuit style.

With a totally mediocre 18-18-2 overall record, 9-9-2 at home and 9-9-0 on the road, Philadelphia finds themselves within 2 points of the last playoff spot.  They also find themselves at a cross roads.  It’s time to show that they have what the experts felt it took to contend for the Stanley Cup, when many predicted them winning the ultimate prize coming into this season.  If they do, Holmgren will be rewarded for his patience in giving his wayward team the time it needed to pull themselves out of their perpetual tailspin and right the ship by not pulling the trigger on a huge deal, and potentially trade away a valuable piece of what the team has been building around.  Carter’s name has been mentioned often in trade rumors, but after going through a stretch of scoring just 2 goals in 11 games, he has notched 3 in his last 6.  This is a good sign for a team that is in desperate need of offense from their primary sniper, who netted a career-high 46 goals just a year ago.

Only time will tell which road the Flyers decide to take, but at least now they are able to see the road again.  And the choice appears to be theirs.  This trip continues Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden against their hated arch-rival New York Rangers, who just happen to be 2 points ahead of Philadelphia.  The Flyers then play the Boston Bruins on New Years Day at Fenway Park in the NHL Winter Classic.  This seems be the perfect chance for the team to make a statement that they are, indeed, back and ready to make a run.

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