WRAPUP: 1-0 OT WIN RUNS FLYERS WINNING STREAK TO NINE GAMES
For the first time since April 2 to 22, 1995, the Philadelphia Flyers have rattled off nine consecutive victories. The team accomplished the feat with a 1-0 overtime win against the Detroit Red Wings in the Flyers' final regular season home game at venerable Joe Louis Arena.
One night after recording the second hat trick of his NHL career, Brayden Schenn broke the scoreless deadlock as he completed a nifty give-and-go connection with rookie defenseman Ivan Provorov to end the game at 2:44 of overtime.
Making his second start in the NHL and first on the road, rookie netminder Anthony Stolarz recorded a 28-save shutout. He had some early-game rebound control issues but fought for saves and the team in front of him did a good job of boxing out and clearing pucks to safety. Stolarz got better and better as the game moved along and he was instrumental in helping the get the game to overtime in third period.
The Flyers caught a break on a third-period play where a would-be goal was washed out by the net being knocked off its moorings a split second before it was shot in the net. Radko Gudas was called for a delay of game penalty -- although it was a questionable call as Gudas' bump of the post as be tried to defend around the crease did not seem intentional. Even so, the exchange was not a bad one for the Flyers, and they killed the penalty.
The early portions of the game were rather sloppy on both sides. In the first period, the Flyers got away with some turnovers and lost coverages on plays where Detroit missed the net on shots, missed connections on passes or harmlessly fumbled the puck away in the act of shooting. As the game moved along, the Flyers played a pretty solid road game, and limited the Red Wings' five-on-five chances.
Jimmy Howard stopped each of the first 35 shots fired on his net by the Flyers until Schenn finally solved him in overtime. Earlier, Travis Konecny created a Detroit turnover and had Pierre-Edouard Bellemare set up in point blank range but Bellemare was unable to finish.
The Flyers, who entered the game with the NHL's top-ranked power play, went 0-for-4 on the man advantage. Philly generated good puck movement, especially on the first two power plays, but just could find a way to score. The Flyers went 5-for-5 on the penalty kill.
On a shift-in and shift-out basis in this game -- and for much of the last month -- the Flyers' best defenseman was Provorov. In fact, the 19-year-old blueliner was one of the best players on either team in Sunday's tilt. Provorov excelled in every facet of the game.
Shayne Gostisbehere, who took a puck off his hand in Saturday's game against the Dallas Stars, is officially day-to-day. He sat out Sunday's game, which enabled Michael Del Zotto to re-enter the Philadelphia lineup. Additionally, Boyd Gordon sat out Sunday's game rather than playing back-to-back games after a long stint on the injured reserve list. Taylor Leier returned to the Philadelphia lineup after being scratched on Saturday.
The Flyers will look to extend their winning streak to 10 games on Wednesday night in Colorado. Philly will take a complete off-day on Monday on the heels of playing three games in four night and eight in the last 13 nights. The club will then practice on Tuesday before leaving for Denver to take on the Colorado Avalanche.
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A Special Reunion
On Wednesday, the night before the Flyers held Goaltenders' Night at the Wells Fargo Center, I got together for dinner in Center City with a group that included Kerstin Pietzsch-Somnell (Pelle Lindbergh's longtime girlfriend/fiancee until the time of his passing), Kevin Cady (Flyers equipment manager in the mid 1980s and a close friend of Pelle's), Thomas Tynander (my "Pelle Lindbergh" Behind the White Mask" co-author) and HockeyBuzz's own Bruce "Scoop" Cooper.
At dinner on Wednesday, Kerstin admitted to being very nervous about Goalies' Night. She wanted to express her gratitude to the Flyers and Flyers fans for keeping Pelle's memory alive, but was anxious about speaking live on camera. She was also looking forward to seeing Bernie Parent again.
As most people who are familiar with Pelle's story are aware, Parent was Lindbergh's idol -- and the Flyers' were Pelle's adopted favorite NHL team -- long before he was ever chosen by Philadelphia in the second round of the 1979 Draft. He emulated Parent's standup style, wore a Parent-style mask emblazoned with Flyers logo decals, watched films on the 1974 and 1975 Stanley Cup Finals until he knew every nuance by instant recall, and dreamed of meeting and befriending his hero.
That is exactly what happened, of course, as Parent became the Flyers goaltending coach after an eye injury prematurely ended his career. Despite their age difference, the two men grew extremely close not just as coach and player but as friends. Parent became almost a second father figure to Lindbergh, who was close with his own dad, Sigge.
Pelle and Bernie shared a lot of common interests off the ice, especially boating and fishing, and Lindbergh had 100 percent faith and trust in Parent. Lindbergh confided in Bernie, learned how to better handle the mental aspects of goaltending and took his advice to heart.
Coincidentally, Parent once had a similar relationship with the legendary Jacques Plante. Growing up in Montreal, Parent idolized Plante. The Parent family also happened to be neighbors with Plante's sister, Therese. When word spread that Plante was coming around for a visit, Bernie and his friends would hide behind the bushes to try to get a glimpse of their hero.
Years later, Plante and Parent became teammates on the Toronto Maple Leafs and, later, Plante became the Flyers' first goaltending coach. Parent always credited Plante with helping him to overhaul his mental game, refine the way he read plays and take the leap from being a good NHL goaltender into a Hall of Fame netminder. Bernie then paid it forward by helping his own prized pupil, Lindbergh, to develop from an immensely talented but still unfinished product into a Vezina Trophy winner who was seemingly still improving even from that loftiest of perches until the fatal car accident of Nov. 10, 1985.
The last time Kerstin had a significant conversation with Bernie Parent was at Pelle's funeral in Stockholm. After the 1985-86 season, she moved from the home she and Pelle lived in South Jersey to Los Angeles, and later, back to Sweden. Gradually, she picked up the pieces and made a new life. Her husband, Tuve, was also in attendance at Goalies' Night.
Several years ago, Kerstin took a trip to Philadelphia -- her first since moving from the area-- and brought her son, Jens. They attended a Flyers game. Goaltenders' Night was just her second time back in all these years, and the first time that she would see Bernie and others who were with the Flyers during Pelle's career, including Brad Marsh (who named his oldest son, former HockeyBuzz blogger Erik Marsh, in honor of Pelle) and Flyers team president Paul Holmgren.
In between the first and second periods of Thursday's game, I stopped by the suite in which the Flyers had invited the honorees for Goalies Night: Bernie Parent, Kerstin and Pete Peeters were all on hand.
Brian Boucher was also in the building and was interviewed by the Flyers' Brian Smith during the first period but was not in the suite when I stopped over. The other honoree, Flyers GM Ron Hextall, was not interviewed but a career highlight video and facts and figures about his career were shown on Arenavision during the night. The Flyers Hall of Fame netminder otherwise deferred the attention to the honorees who had to travel to be there, along with franchise icon Parent.
When I said hello to Kerstin, she noted that she had dinner with Parent prior to the game, and it was a very special experience. She smiled a contented smile. The beaming expression on Parent's face, too, showed that it was very special to him to be able to see Kerstin again because they both loved Pelle for different reasons.
"When Pelle won the Vezina, I was as happy and proud for him as when I won it," Parent said in an interview for Behind the White Mask. "I knew how hard he worked for it and I was with him when the times were tough. But when he won it, I hugged him and then I stepped aside. He had earned that night."
If Pelle had lived, Bernie would have come to Sweden as an honored guest at his wedding. Instead, he delivered a moving eulogy for Pelle in front of a sold-out Philadelphia Spectrum and then paid his final respects to Pelle at his funeral in Stockholm. In the original set of interviews for the Swedish version of the Pelle book, Parent told Thomas Tynander that he had a cathartic experience while standing in Pelle's childhood bedroom at his parents' apartment in Stockholm.
Call it an eerie coincidence, but the Flyers' game-winning goal in Thursday's game was scored on the team's 31st and final shot of the night.
Additionally, it was scored against one of the latter-day Swedish netminders (Jonas Gustavsson) for whom Lindbergh first blazed the trail to the NHL. Prior to Pelle, and even until the 1990s, the other European goaltenders who had come over the NHL had been a collective flop. His Vezina Trophy season started to open doors of opportunities.
The Flyers meant everything to Pelle Lindbergh -- which is why his gravestone bears a Flyers logo on it -- and no two people in his professional and personal life meant more to him in his adult years than Kerstin and Parent. He considered Kevin one of his best friends and was also friends with teammate Marsh.
To see them meet up together again, but most especially Kerstin and Bernie on a night when the Flyers pulled off an improbable win to keep alive their winning streak -- one of the longest since the franchise record 13-game streak in the fall of 1985 that overlapped with his passing in the wee hours after the team celebrated its 10th straight win with a get together at the Coliseum-- would have been a thrill for the sublimely talented little netminder that teammates called "Gump." So, yeah, I do think Pelle Lindbergh was there in spirit on Thursday night.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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