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Meltzer's Musings: Another Night, Another Comeback

January 19, 2014, 12:29 AM ET [166 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
FLYERS TIE FRANCHISE RECORD WITH NINTH THIRD-PERIOD COMEBACK WIN

The Philadelphia Flyers have gotten pretty good at this third-period comeback win. Tonight's 6-4 victory over the New York Islanders at the Wells Fargo Center tied a franchise record for third period comebacks.

The win marked the ninth time this season -- all since after Thanksgiving -- that the Flyers have come back to win after trailing at some point in the third period. It is their fifth win when trailing at the second intermission.

There were three lead changes in the game. The Flyers trailed 2-0 and then went on to score the next three goals on a pair of goals by Andrej Meszaros and an Adam Hall deflection. The Islanders then came back to score the next two and take a 4-3 lead to the second intermission. In the third period, the Flyers outshot the Islanders by a 14-2 margin and scored three unanswered goals by Jakub Voracek, Michael Raffl and Matt Read (empty net goal) to grab the 6-4 win.

John Tavares, Cal Clutterbuck, Brock Nelson and Brian Strait (on a shot that appeared to be deflected by Nelson) were credited with the four Islanders goals. New York outshot the Flyers by a 27-18 margin through the opening two periods.

Flyers goaltender Steve Mason, with the ink just dried on his new three-year, $12.3 million contract, deserved better than what he got tonight. The Flyers' goaltender had no chance on any of the four goals that got past him on 24 shots, and actually had to make numerous tough saves to even keep the Flyers within shouting distance at times.

The Tavares goal at 7:43 of the first period saw Braydon Coburn and Adam Hall abandon coverages in front of the net while Nicklas Grossmann lost a battle behind the net. The Islanders' most dangerous player was left all alone at point blank range to receive a feed from Thomas Vanek.

Clutterbuck's shorthanded goal at 11:54 of the first period was the eighth the Flyers have allowed this season; only Edmonton (nine) has allowed more. On the play, Voracek got outworked by Frans Nielsen on a counterattack up the left side and Scott Hartnell dogged it on the backcheck -- no other way to put it -- to allow Clutterbuck to get wide open over the middle.

Nelson's goal at 11:05 of the second period was a vicious deflection of a Calvin de Haan point shot that had a lot of movement on it in its own right.

The goal credited to Strait at 14:00 of the middle stanza was a play where Mason was screened by defensemen Mark Streit and Grossmann (who was attempting to block a shot). The puck appeared to deflect off the stick of Nelson, hit the post and go in.

Mason was pulled by Craig Berube after the fourth goal, but it had nothing to do with the way the goaltender was playing. The changeover to Ray Emery was done solely to wake up the team.

After the game, Berube aptly described Mason as a "victim" in this game, and the coach was absolutely right. Under the same set of conditions, no goaltender in the world was going to give up less than the four goals.

Over the remaining 24:00 of the game after the change in net, the Flyers gave up just five shots on goal. Emery was tested only once among the shots he saw. So the message was heard loud and clear.

Early in the season, third periods were a major trouble spot for the Flyers. Winning, losing or tied after two periods, Philly's goal and shot differential early in the season was horrific. Over the last seven weeks, third periods have become the team's saving grace on many nights.

The Flyers came at the Islanders with ferocity in the third period, whether it was generating speed through the neutral zone or getting pucks in deep and pounding the Isles with their forecheck. It felt like a matter of time until they got rewarded on the scoreboard.

After the game, I asked Voracek what he thinks the main difference is now between the Flyers' third periods early in the season and the ones since Thanksgiving.

"Confidence," he said. "I think we're skating better in the third period than we used to in the beginning of the season. We have more energy. We're really working on our forecheck in practices and games. I think that's what won us the game today in the third period."

The sequence that ended with Voracek's game-tying goal at 7:14 saw the Flyers work the puck in deep and generate a pair of good chance. The first one, by Raffl, was not cashed in. The second one, on a tremendous passing sequence that saw Kimmo Timonen find Claude Giroux and the Flyers' captain feather a pass to Voracek in the right circle, got hammered home. The tally was Voracek's 14th of the season.

At the 15:45 mark, Raffl was the trailer on a rush up the ice and ripped home the go-ahead goal from the left slot. Once again, Giroux made a tremendous setup play to create the scoring chance. Voracek received the secondary helper. Read's empty net goal sealed the win.

The Islanders' team defense was every bit as porous as Philly's throughout the game. Both teams had too many forwards cheating out of the zone and providing precious little backchecking help, while the defensemen blew assignments and made poor breakout pass attempts under the slightest pressure.

Meanwhile, the New York goaltending in the game was subpar; far worse than Philly's in actuality. Although Kevin Poulin could only be directly faulted on the first Flyers' goal, he looked shaky all night on shots from all angles. It is fair to say that the Islanders' scatterbrained defense in this game was an example of mediocre defense and mediocre goaltending feeding into each other and dragging the other down even further.

Meszaros' first goal at 14:43 was one of the softest goals an opposing goalie has yielded to Philly this season (although Sean Couturier's goal out of the corner probably topped it). The Flyers defenseman carried the mail up the left side and fired a routine shot from a severe angle that got under Poulin's stick and slipped through the five hole.

The soft goal gave the Flyers life when they were on the ropes early.

Meszaros' second goal at 18:38 of the first period was partially due to a great move by Meszaros to fake a shot and move around a defender, partially due to Poulin crouching too low and leaving room upstairs and partially due to a beautiful shot by Meszaros to top-shelf it. Meszaros said after the game that he saw room in both top corners, went for the high blocker side (where he tries to go in practice) and was fortunate enough to hit the mark.

The Hall goal at 3:45 of the second period was an unstoppable one. The Flyers forward deflected a Streit point shot and the puck severely changed direction on Poulin. The play was briefly reviewed to check if Hall played the puck with a high stick but the goal stood.

Philly came out on the favorable end of a waved off Islanders goal not all that long thereafter. Vanek was called for a crease/ non-penalty goalie interference violation for falling into the middle of the crease without being pushed. The Flyers temporarily held their 3-2 lead but it was clear even then that neither team was done scoring for the night.

The Flyers went 0-for-2 on the power play in the game, with a shorthanded goal allowed. New York went 0-for-3 on the man advantage, and Philly's stellar third-period kill of an automatic delay of game penalty on Meszaros for flipping the puck over the glass in the defensive zone was a momentum builder for the Flyers in the final stanza.

It is wonderful that the Flyers know they are not out of games when they trail, and have become an excellent comeback team. However, no team can afford to play with fire like that too often.

The same Flyers' team that, in November, went six-plus games without allowing a single even strength goal has been awful defensively too often of late.

Philly has a 5-3-1 record thus far in January. The club has scored three or more regulation goals in seven of the nine games (5-1-1 record). That's quite good, but what's not so good is that they've allowed three or more regulation goals in six games (3-2-1 record), including each of the last five matches.

Over the long haul, this is unsustainable. For this reason, Berube was an unhappy coach after the game. In his roughly 65-word postgame press conference, "Chief" used about half the words to say the team played well in the third period. The others, straight and to point, were used to convey that the first 40 minutes were unacceptable and that Mason was not the one deserving of blame.

Final thoughts: Sometimes one team just has another one's number. In their last 35 games against the Islanders, the Flyers sport a 30-3-2 record. The Flyers have already clinched the season series again this year.

Philly will look for a season series sweep in the back end of the home-and-home set. The two teams will rematch at Nassau Coliseum on Monday afternoon. Opening faceoff is 1 p.m.

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