All hands were on deck for the Philadelphia Flyers as they extended their winning streak to three straight game by virtue of grinding out a 2-1 road win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Brayden Schenn notched both goals for the Flyers, while Ray Emery turned back 30 of 31 Pittsburgh shots to notch the win.
On Tuesday, the Flyers built off a 4-2 win over Edmonton with a dominating 5-0 shutout win in Ottawa. Last night at Pittsburgh's Consol Energy Center, the Flyers bent but didn't break as they skated off with a 2-1 win.
Why did the Flyers win this game? All of the following reasons:
Another strong Flyers' goaltending effort: Emery was locked in. After some shaky moments with rebound control in the first five minutes of the game -- including a would-be Chris Kunitz goal in the opening half minute that was disallowed for being kicked into the net -- Emery gobbled up everything fired his way. He made momentum saves, including stopping Sidney Crosby on a breakaway after a turnover by Mark Streit. There were few second-chance opportunities as the game progressed; rebounds were either non-existent or directed into the corners. Emery also did a good job at stopping pucks in the trapezoid and getting them quickly to his defensemen.
Effective play without the puck and good puck support. Philadelphia defenders did a solid job of keeping themselves between Penguins attackers and the net, with strong sticks and physically aggressive play. Teammates provided proper support as well. Even when the Penguins spent extensive time in the Philly end of the ice, it was usually kept along the perimeter. Lastly, the Flyers won a healthy percentage of battles along the walls.
Every member of the blueline had a strong game, especially Braydon Coburn (28:31 of ice time, two blocks, one takeaway) and Kimmo Timonen (24:37). Nicklas Grossmann (19:48, five hits, two blocks) made a coverage mistake on Sidney Crosby's power play goal but was otherwise a beast on defense. Center Sean Couturier did his usual strong job of containing and frustrating Evgeni Malkin in 5-on-5 play. Although the Flyers spend much of the third period on their own side of the red line, they limited the Pens to six shots in crunch time.
On the forecheck, the Flyers were able to generate some extended attack time of their own, at least in the latter portions of the first period and especially in the middle stanza. Many players contributed strong shifts in this regard, but Wayne Simmonds deserves to be singled out for his excellent forechecking work.
In his most memorable sequence, Simmonds made Schenn's first goal possible by winning a one-on-two battle behind the Pittsburgh net as his team was in the middle of a change. Simmonds ultimately took the puck away from Robert Bortuzzo and then fed the puck to Schenn in the left circle. Schenn sniped the long-side top corner.
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Right before the first Schenn goal, the Claude Giroux line pinned the Penguins deep in their own zone. That was a momentum generating shift and it was quickly followed up by another strong forechecking shift and, ultimately, Schenn's goal.
Poor shooting by Pittsburgh: The Penguins are still a mighty dangerous team that will eventually get its scoring chances. Last night, Pittsburgh found the glass instead of Ray Emery's net on a number of good looks. Pittsburgh missed the net on 19 shot attempts, including three by James Neal (twice from good scoring range). Malkin compounded things by letting himself get frustrated by the close checking of Couturier and Grossmann at five-on-five.
Superior puck management: The Flyers were only charged with one giveaway for the game, to 10 for Pittsburgh. Philly was also credited with eight takeaways to six for the Penguins.
Strong night in the faceoff circle: The Flyers won 56 percent of the faceoffs in the game. That included a 10-for-13 performance by Vincent Lecavalier and 7-for-8 for Adam Hall. The latter has been in a tremendous groove on draws of late. Hall is 21-for-24 (87.5 percent) on faceoffs over the team's last four games. On the Pittsburgh side, faceoff woes added to Malkin's frustrations, as he went 4-for-12. Crosby went 11-for-27.
Generally strong game on special teams. Apart from losing track of Crosby on the only Pittsburgh goal -- which came point-blank off an excellent feed by Malkin -- the Flyers' special teams did the job in this game. The Flyers killed off each of their other three penalties in the match and Schenn cashed in on Philly's lone power play.
On Schenn's game-winning power play goal late in the second period, the Penguins' Kris Letang was guilty of some egregiously bad coverage of his own. First, he attempted to front the Flyers players at the net. Once the initial shot by Jakub Voracek got through -- if you are going to front someone, the puck had better not get past you -- Schenn was wide open to collect the rebound. By that point, it was going to be tough for Letang to recover and prevent a goal but he at least needed to make a better second effort than he did. Also note the work of Steve Downie directly in front of Marc-Andre Fleury. Downie got a stick on the puck and ended up drawing the primary assist.
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On the penalty killing side of the ledger, the Flyers drew strength and some momentum from their first and fourth kills of the game. Emery also stepped up whenever he was needed.
Energy management: The Flyers were able to roll all four forward lines and three defensive pairs (sans Grossmann, who had to leave early in the third period) in the Ottawa game. That paid dividends last night when the Flyers had to travel back to the U.S. to play a rested Pittsburgh team.
In a tight match, Berube had to shorten his bench and limit the use of his fourth line and, to a lesser extent, the third defense pairing of Luke Schenn (13:48) and Erik Gustafsson (13:44). The third pairing played just fine, actually. Jay Rosehill, took a penalty when the Flyers ended up with an unfavorable matchup in their own end of the ice; which set the stage for the Crosby power play goal. Zac Rinaldo skated 6:26 over nine shifts. He was credited with three hits. More notably on this night, however, Berube and Ian Laperriere entrusted Rinaldo to play 1:09 worth of shorthanded time and to take a shift with the team defending its one-goal lead late in the game.
Energy management is going to be especially critical come Friday night in Winnipeg. Not only will it be the Flyers third road game in four nights, they will have logged a lot of travel miles just to get from Philadelphia to Ottawa to Pittsburgh to Winnipeg. By necessity, the Flyers had to expend a lot of energy to grind out the win over the Penguins. In order to avoid fatigue setting in for Friday's game, short shifts will be a must.
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FLYERS FAITHFUL SNIDER HOCKEY FUNDRAISER
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Participation costs $10. Half of that money goes to Snider Hockey and the other half goes to the winning quiz team. There will be a 50/50 raffle and other giveaways at the event.
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