I can’t remember the last time that I saw Flyers coach Peter Laviolette let loose with a fist pump, like he did on Tuesday night in Winnpeg.
9.7 seconds was all that separated the Flyers from falling to the 6th seed and the Jets from gaining the third 3rd seed in the Eastern Conference.
And when Wayne Simmonds got that goal, forcing overtime in a 4-4 match, Lavy let loose behind the bench.
It was great to see.
And even better, the Flyers had a gutsy effort to overcome a terrible fourth goal from Ilya Bryzgalov and poor penalty killing once again.
Jaromir Jagr’s 16th career OT marker set a new NHL record and bailed everyone out.
What I really like is that Bryz finally took responsibility of giving up a horrendous goal. In this case, the fourth one that nearly lost the game.
He waved at the puck as it sailed past him though he said it hit him.
“Just a stupid mistake,” Bryzgalov said. “I started catching the puck and I miscalculated the distance between the puck and my glove and it hit me on the edge of the glove and went in.
“I’m kinda sick and tired of these mistakes. It’s not like playing bad, it’s just consistently stupid mistakes. I want to help the team.”
Another thing I found amusing was Bryz’ sarcasm about the fans chanting, “Ilya, Ilya.” The chanting began as the puck dropped and resurfaced after Evander Kane’s goal that even seemed to amuse Kane – it was that bad.
“You know, I like it,” he said. “It’s great atmosphere. I wished every building was going to be supportive like that. They gonna support me like here. It was nice to hear cheering, ‘Ilya, Ilya.’
“I never heard that before anywhere. When 15,000 people support you, it’s a great present.”
I asked Bryz if the fans here were acting just like they do in Philly.
“No,” Bryzgalov replied. “Here there is cheering. In Philly, they boo me.”
One thing that surprised me was how little power play and penalty kill time Pavel Kubina got in this game.
However, Kubina told after the game that he had not been on the ice for more than that one Flyer practice in over a week. He had tired legs. That’s when it made sense that Lavy was trying to give him gradual work in the game even though he still go 20 minutes of ice time.
The Flyers need to greatly improve on the PK or they are going to be in serious trouble down the stretch.
Also, the Flyers have not won consecutive games since Jan. 10-12 – more than a month ago! Both those games were on the road, too – at Carolina, at the Islanders.
That’s something to shoot for Thursday in Edmonton.
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