Wrap: Flyers Blank Blackhawks, 4-0
The streak lives on for another year. On Saturday afternoon at the Wells Fargo Center, the Philadelphia Flyers earned their 15th straight regular season home win over the Chicago Blackhawks with a 4-0 whitewashing of the Central Division club. The Blackhawks have not won a regular season game in Philadelphia since Nov. 9, 1996.
More important, the win raised the current Flyers team's season record to 9-7-1 through 17 games. The Flyers are 5-0-1 in their last six games and 2-0-0 on the current five-game homestand. On Sunday morning, the Flyers will wake up in second place in the Metropolitan Division, one point behind the Columbus Blue Jackets (9-6-2).
Chicago is now winless in its last seven games (0-6-1) and is 0-2-0 since Jeremy Colliton took over as head coach after the dismissal of the iconic Joel Quenneville.
Philly did not play a spotless game on Saturday by any means but were the better team after a slow start and were relentless in building on their lead once they forged ahead of what is currently a fragile Blackhawks team. From the standpoint of the Flyers, who started the season 4-7-0 and whose teamwide performance was largely atrocious before a turnaround in a four-game western road trip, the role reversal was nice to see.
"I think we’re confident in the way we’re playing. We’re playing really good team game, defense, the goalie to the forwards- I think our chemistry is a lot better," Flyers captain Claude Giroux said.
The foundation of the Flyers' victory started in goal. Brian Elliott was outstanding, looking razor sharp in stopping all 33 shots fired on his net. In the first half of the opening period, the the Flyers got outplayed and needed their goaltender to bail them out. Chicago also made sporadic pushes over the balance of the game. Each and every time, Elliott was there to make the saves.
"He was outstanding. Without him in there, it would be a different game, I would think," Flyers defenseman Robert Hägg said.
With the last line change at home, Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol frequently matched the team's top line of Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny plus the defense pair of Ivan Provorov and Hägg head-to-head with Patrick Kane's line centered by Artem Anisimov. The youthful line with Nolan Patrick and Oskar Lindblom saw duties against veteran Chicago captain Jonathan Toews' line. It paid off, as the Couturier line had a dominant all-around afternoon and the other matchup was largely a stalemate on this day.
Couturier (two goals, one assist) and Giroux (one goal, two assists) each enjoyed three-point afternoons. Patrick (empty-net goal) rounded out the goal scoring. Provorov chipped in his 5th assist of the season as well.
On Saturday afternoon, Giroux caught and passed Rick MacLeish for 4th on the Flyers' all-time points list. Giroux's next point will be the 700th of his career. Additionally, with 478 assists, Giroux is two away from catching Brian Propp for second on the Flyers' all-time list.
"It’s a great honor. There’s a lot of good players that played here and to be able to be in that group, it’s very special," Giroux said.
In a battle of a struggling Chicago power play against a struggling Flyers' penalty kill, Philly got the better of it. The Flyers went a much-needed 4-for-4 on the kill and Couturier scored a backbreaking goal right after a Lindblom penalty expired. In a battle of a struggling Flyers power play against a struggling Chicago PK, Philly went 0-for-3 but generated very heavy pressure and excellent puck movement. Chicago goaltender Corey Crawford was frequently his team's best penalty killer on this day. Crawford, in a losing cause, made 21 saves on 24 shots on the afternoon.
For more about Saturday's game,
click here. The Flyers have a well-deserved complete off-day on Sunday. On Monday, they will resume practice at the Skate Zone in Voorhees, preparing for Tuesday's game at the Wells Fargo Center against the Florida Panthers (5-5-2).
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Wrap: Phantoms Lose to Charlotte, 7-4
One evening after thrashing Springfield at the PPL Center, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms played host to the Atlantic Division leading Charlotte Checkers. Things didn't go nearly as well as on Friday night, as the Phantoms paid for numerous errors of commission and omission and went down by a 7-4 count despite a 3-2 Lehigh Valley lead at the first intermission.
The Phantoms, who have been rather inconsistent over the first month of the season, fell to 7-4-2 on the still-young campaign. Charlotte improved to 11-2-0.
The brightest spot for the Phantoms on Saturday was the continued strong play of rookie winger David Kase. The young Czech forward is now up to nine points on the season, scoring his fifth goal and adding a power play assist. On the downside, fellow standout rookie German Rubtsov was out of the lineup on Saturday for an undisclosed reason.
Apart from Kase, the Phantoms also got goals on Saturday from veteran forward Greg Carey (8th), veteran defenseman Zach Palmquist (1st) and veteran forward Chris Conner (power play, 6th). Assists came from veteran defenseman T.J. Brennan (power play, 12th), second-year center Mike Vecchione (4th) and goaltender Alex Lyon (1st).
Lyon stopped 29 of 35 shots on a rough statistical night for him and for the team. The final Charlotte tally was an empty-net goal.
The Checkers got two goals (6th and 7th) and an assist from Nicolas Roy and one goal apiece from Patrick Brown (4th), Aleksi Saarela (2nd), Trevor Carrick (3rd), Nick Schilkey (1st) and Saku Maenalanen (empty net, 4th). Julien Gauthier collected his 3rd and 4th assists of the season. Charlotte goalie Alex Nedeljkovic earned the win, stopping 25 of 29 shots.
All of Charlotte's scoring came at 5-on-5 or 5-on-6. The Phantoms went 5-for-5 on the penalty kill and 1-for-4 on the power play.
With the game scoreless midway through the first period, Phantoms forward Tyrell Goulbourne fought Charlotte's Dan Renouf. Goulbourne incurred an extra penalty for removing his helmet. Late in the third period, Goulbourne incurred a match penalty for slew footing, which carries an automatic review for potential supplemental discipline. All totaled, Goulbourne incurred 27 minutes in penalties. He'd had just one minor penalty on the season entering the game.
Below is the Phantoms' lineup from Saturday's game:
10 Greg Carey - 26 Phil Varone - 9 Cole Bardreau
24 Carsen Twarynski - 21 Mike Vecchione - 22 Chris Conner
12 Tyrell Goulbourne - 19 Radel Fazleev - 38 David Kase
23 Taylor Leier- 15 Mikhail Vorobyev - 13 Colin McDonald
6 Philip Samuelsson - 5 Philippe Myers
43 T.J. Brennan - 37 Mark Friedman
7 Zach Palmquist - 44 Reece Willcox
34 Alex Lyon
[31 Carter Hart]
Scratches:17 German Rubtsov (lower body), 41 Anthony Stolarz (healthy), 25 Connor Bunnaman (healthy), 2 James de Haas (healthy).
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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