It is not often that a team gets badly outplayed on special teams, runs into an opposing goalie who performed as well as the Winnipeg Jets' Ondrej Pavelec did last night, finds itself staring at three separate one-goal deficits and still wins the hockey game. But that's exactly what the Philadelphia Flyers did in last night's 5-4 win at the MTS Centre.
The Flyers showed a lot of character last night, bombarding Pavelec with 55 shots and refusing to quit. As bad as the Flyers were on the penalty kill (0-for-3, with three goals against on three shots), that's how dominant all four lines were at even strength. Eventually, they got rewarded.
Ilya Bryzgalov had another uneven game in goal for the Flyers. There were times he fought the puck or flopped around his crease in seeming desperation (on one occasion in particular, Brayden Schenn's stop along the goal line prevented a goal). The fourth Winnipeg goal -- a fluttering shot from the high slot by Evander Kane -- was headed over the top of the net until Bryzgalov misjudged his attempted glove-hand catch, the puck hit off the goalie's glove, and dropped into the net.
On the other hand, Bryzgalov made his two best stops of the game after the Kane goal, including a dandy in overtime. If you're going to skewer the goaltender for the fourth goal, then also give credit where it's due for his subsequent play. He didn't see much rubber, but a couple of them were real testers and he did what he needed to do.
Bryzgalov could not be directly faulted on the first three Winnipeg goals -- a Dustin Byfuglien power play shot through a heavy screen in front by Andrew Ladd, a point blank chance for Adam Ladd off a quick centering pass by Blake Wheeler, and an overload in front where Ladd quickly steered in a Bryan Little rebound.
However, every once in awhile, you need your goalie to come up with one of those. Pavelec certainly stole a few would-be goals from Philly, especially a mind-boggling save on fellow Kladno native, Jakub Voracek, with the Flyers pressing to tie the game in the third period. That, and a couple others, were even tougher saves than the ones Bryz yielded.
So when you step back from last night's game and look at Bryzgalov's night on the whole, you come up with an average performance -- far from great, but not nearly as awful as many made it out to be. On this night, it was just enough to win. Hopefully, it's a baby step in the right direction.
At any rate, the Flyers' recently reconfigured forward lines had little trouble doing as they pleased against Winnipeg's defense. Philly fans love to gripe endlessly over mistakes by Flyers' defenders but the miscues by opposing defensemen go unmentioned in discussing the goals that Philly scores.
Last night, Byfuglien and the duo of Ron Hainsey and Johnny Oduya were guilty of a half-dozen coverage and/or puck blunders while the forwards did a bunch of sloppy stick checking. Pavelec erased a lot of the mistakes, but eventually the persistent Flyers cashed in five times.
Scott Hartnell and Wayne Simmonds did tremendous work down low on the sequence that led to Claude Giroux's backhander upstairs over the traffic around the net. Hartnell's power play goal was also a result of establishing good body position. On the Flyers' third goal, Max Talbot got to the net unimpeded.
With time running to the final 10 seconds of regulation, James van Riemsdyk (who was dominant in this game) had little difficulty skating at will through Winnipeg's weak checking. With all eyes on JVR, Simmonds was never marked by Byfuglien and crashed the net to receive the puck and immediately ram it past the goaltender.
On the game winner in overtime, Danny Briere outworked two Jets down low while Jagr got open in the slot. The future Hall of Famer took care of the rest, scoring his NHL record 16th regular season overtime goal (and career regular season goal number 662, six away from tying Luc Robitaille for 10th on the all-time NHL list).
With the Penguins shutting out the Rangers last night and the Devils prevailing in overtime against Toronto, the Flyers needed these two points to hold onto third place in the Atlantic Division. They got it. Now it's on to Alberta for games in Edmonton on Thursday and Calgary on Saturday.
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After last night's game, I posted a comment on Twitter that I thought Sean Couturier had hit a bit of a "rookie wall" since the All-Star break. People immediately leaped to his defense, with most attributing it to the fact he has once again been skating on the fourth line at five-on-five.
It was not Couturier's dip in offensive production of late that I was referring to. I was talking about a seeming drop in his energy level and effectiveness on the penalty kill. On plays he was making before, he now seems to be arriving a half-stride too late or turning pucks over in situations where he usually shields it or gets the puck to safety.
All of this is normal. Couturier may be highly advanced for a 19-year-old player but he is still a teenager going through the grind of his first NHL season, which is nearing the final quarter. The fatigue has shown up a bit this month. That's all I was saying. The same thing is going on with Matt Read but to a little lesser extent.
Even though he is scuffling in certain areas, Couturier won 9 of 13 faceoffs last night. There are bright days ahead for him again.
For right now, though, I think the Flyers may need to tweak their PK lines a bit (as they have at five-on-five), because the Couturier-Read duo has been out for a lot of recent opposition power play goals that have been a problem for the team this month. The rookies have done good work on the season as a whole.
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Apart from the goaltending, another area the Flyers still need to clean up a bit more is in forwards helping out down low defensively. the forwards still need to help out more defensively.
Last night, on two plays where some blamed Flyers defensemen got blamed for "not clearing the porch", there was absolutely zero weak side help from the forwards and D-men were left with overloads and too much real estate to cover.
That's been a problem way too often this season, and was a factor in why three of the four games against Winnipeg this season ended up being such high-scoring affairs. In the Pittsburgh game, I thought the forwards helped close the gap effectively for two periods before everything collectively fell apart in the final period.
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