In the front end of a weekend home-and-home set, the Philadelphia Flyers skated to a 5-2 blowout win over New York Rangers at the Wells Fargo Center on Friday evening. After some energetic but sloppy early play, the Flyers started to take over the game. Philadelphia dominated the lion's share of the play. The Flyers outshot and outchanced the Rangers in all three periods.
One game after the Kevin Hayes line led the way offensively, it was the Flyers' top line's turn to dominate. Jakub Voracek racked up four assists, Claude Giroux bagged a pair of goals (even strength and power play), and Sean Couturier had a goal and an assist.
"In today’s game, our top boys were top performers tonight. They showed up, they played big, they made some plays, they capitalized on a couple of the other teams mistakes. I’ve said this a couple times there, you need your top players to lead the way and I thought Coots’s line tonight with G and Jake certainly did that. Nisky I thought was a force on defense. Cahtah Haht [Carter Hart] made some big saves tonight, the ones you want your goaltender to make," said Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault.
Additionally, Hayes scored a third-period goal, James van Riemsdyk put the Flyers ahead to stay, and and Scott Laughton kicked in a pair of assists.
After allowing an early rebound goal, Carter Hart was outstanding the rest of the way whenever called upon. He stopped 26 of 28 shots. Alexandar Georgiev, starting for the third time in four nights, took the loss. He stoped 35 of 40 shots.
"They’re a good hockey team. They got the guys on their team that are skilled and can make plays and they have been playing great hockey lately. We knew it was going to be a test coming in, but we prepared which was nice to get this win here tonight. Just got to go into the game on Sunday with the same mindset," Hart said.
The Rangers came into the game playing for the third time in four nights, and on the second half of a road back-to-back (Montreal and Philadelphia). The Flyers pressured them relentlessly and noticeably wore New York down.
"I think it comes down to how we prepare for the game and how prepared we are physically. In the second and third, we want to wear teams down. It is not easy to play 60 minutes all out and grinding games. We have a lot of skill to take over in the second and third. It has been like that all season long. We are physically well prepared, and it shows," Voracek said.
Jesper Fast (12th goal of the season) and Couturier (20th) scored offsetting goals in the first period. Van Riemsdyk (19th) and Giroux (18th) built a 3-1 edge for the Flyers. In the third period, Giroux struck again (power play, 19th) early in the third period, which Hayes (22nd) later supplemented. Brett Howden (9th) scored a meaningless late goal in a flurry around the Flyers net.
"It was a great team win. They came out and scored the first goal then we responded the right way. I thought everyone played great tonight especially Coots’s line. I'm not really big on individual statistics, scoring is always nice, but it was a great team win. I thought it was a huge team effort and a big two points," Hayes said.
The Rangers suffered a costly in the first period as top-line winger Chris Kreider sustained a fractured foot blocking a Phil Myers shot.
Fast made a nice one-handed follow-up on his shot on the Rangers' goal at 2:49 of the first period, but it was an initial shot that Hart should have been able to glove cleanly and did not. Panarin got the lone assist. Later in the period, Hart made two excellent saves on Panarin in a pair of different sequences.
The Flyers took over territorial control as the first period moved along. Finally, they drew even on the scoreboard in the latter stages of the stanza. Voracek hustled to a loose puck behind the net, helped be a broken stick laying on the ice. Couturier went to the net, took the feed, and scored point blank for his third straight 20+ goal season.
First period shots were 16-8 in the Flyers favor. Shot attempts were 32-17 Flyers. High danger scoring chances were 4-2 Flyers per Natural Stat Trick. Understandably, Derek Grant looked much better in the first period of this game than he did early in Tuesday's game against San Jose. The Flyers overall won 72 percent of the first-period faceofs.
Hart stepped up early in the second period, and made two more tough saves on the deadliy Panarin; one at even strength and one on the power play. Philly promptly resumed its control of the game. Giroux drew iron and Georgiev made a pair of great skate saves after Hayes cut in on net with the puck early in the second period. Eventually, Philadelphia broke through.
On the Flyers' second goal, Nicolas Aube-Kubel shot from the right circle: a rising shot, not a shot for the far pad, but it had the same outcome. The puck rebounded to JVR on the opposite side, who potted it at 13:00. Laughton earned the secondary assist.
Giroux was knocking on the door all night -- including earlier in the same shift in which the Rangers were hemmed in for an extended period. Finally, the captain buried a Couturier feed with a right circle one-timer at 15;05 Voracek picked up his second assist of the game.
Second period shots were 13-10 Flyers (29-18 Flyers through two periods). Attempts were 22-13 Flyers (54-30 Flyers through two periods). High-danger scoring chances were 6-1 Flyers (10-3 Flyers overall).
In the third period, the Flyers were able to rest many of their upper-lineup players. Nevertheless, until near the tail end of the game, New York generated very little offensively.
Excellent puck movement and the use of the play where Claude Giroux drops below the goal line culminated in the power play goal that made it 4-1 Flyers at 2:36 of the 3rd period. Voracek got his third assist. Voracek made it four assists, creating a 3-on-1 right after his own delay of game penalty expired. Hayes buried Voracek's perfect feed for a 5-1 lead. Laughton got his second assist.
With the game firmly in hand, Philly finally took their foot off the gas in the final two minutes. With 26 seconds left, Howden scored in close to narrow the final margin of defeat from four to three goals.
Final shots were 37-23 Flyers. Final high-danger chances were 14-6 in the Flyers' favor. Dominant on draws all night, the Flyers won 68 percent of the faceoffs. Giroux led the way at 13-for-16.
The Flyers, who improved to 23-5-4 on home ice and won their fifth straight game, have begun to put a little bit of distance between themselves and the teams behind them in the Metropolitan Division standings. Philadelphia (81 points, 27 regulation wins) is now three points ahead of the upper-wildcard New York Islanders, five points ahead of lower wildcard Columbus (plus holding two games in hand), seven points ahead of both Carolina and the Rangers.
As a result, the Flyers can look ahead rather than behind them in the standings. Pittsburgh, one point ahead of the Flyers at the beginning of the night, was on the road to play Anaheim. Pittsburgh lost, 3-2, so the Flyers moved into second place. Now one point behind the Flyers, the Penguins hold one game in hand. Idle on Friday, the first-place Washington Capitals are four points ahead of the Flyers plus a 29-27 RW tiebreaker edge.
The Flyers will have a noon practice at the Skate Zone in Voorhees on Saturday and then take a train to New York. On Sunday at noon, the Flyers and Rangers will rematch at Madison Square Garden.
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Phantoms Down Charlotte, 5-3
The Lehigh Phantoms, with their lineup bolstered by the AHL returns of Connor Bunnaman and Joel Farabee, skated to a 5-3 win over the Carlotte Checkers at the PPL Center on Friday night. With the win, the Phantoms improved to 24-25-8 while Charlotte fellt to 30-21-4.
The Phantoms got two goals from Bunnaman (shorthanded and empty net) in his first game back since he and Farabee were assigned to Lehigh Valley on Monday. The Phantoms also got a goal apiece from Cal O'Reilly, Andy Andreoff and Maksim Sushko. Morgan Frost and Mark Friedman each collected two assists.
Alex Lyon stopped 29 of 32 shots to earn the win, defeating Checkers counterpart Mike Condon. The Phantoms, who beat Charlotte for the fifth time this season,sported 1980 Team USA Olympic style jerseys, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice.
Charlotte led 1-0 early as Travis Sanheim's former Calgary Hitmen defense partner, Jake Bean, blasted a Roland McKeon shot past Lyon. Lehigh Valley knotted the score about six minutes later. David Kase collected a deflected puck near the right side of the cage and shuttled over to O'Reilly for a tap-in. At 15:33 of the opening stanza, the Phantoms went ahead on good plays at both ends of the ice by Andreoff. He started the play in the D-zone and later took a feed from Frost and sent it home from the right circle for his 9th goal of the season.
At 15:29 of the second period, the Phantoms were given a gift on an own goal by Charlotte during a delayed penalty on Lehigh Valley. With Misha Vorobyev about to get the gate, Condon skated toward the bench for an extra attacker. A Charlotte player absent-mindedly tried to play the puck back to Condon, and the puck slid into the vacated net. The last Phantom to touch the puck, Sushko, was credited with his 11th goal of the season.
Charlotte got back within 3-2 early in the third period. Mark Cooper re-directed home a shot by Bean. The score held until the latter stages of the third period, when Charlotte had a chance to tie the game on the power play and instead yielded a shorthanded goal. Isaac Ratcliffe and Bunnaman got a 2-on-1 counter opportunity and Bunnaman finished off the feed in the slot for a 4-2 edge. Friedman earned the secondary assist for starting the play. Charlotte's Max McCormick scored quickly thereafter during the remaining power play time, bringing the Checkers back to a one-goal deficit at 4-3.
Frost got his second helper of the game as Bunnaman bagged an empty netter at 19:52. Friedman got another secondary assist.
The Phantoms and Checkers will play again at the PPL Center on Saturday. Once again, the start time will be 7:00 p.m. ET.