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Wrap: Youngsters Spur Flyers to 5-2 Win @ MTL; Phantoms Update

January 20, 2019, 6:28 AM ET [154 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Wrao: Youngsters Lift Flyers Over Habs, 5-2

Saturday night's three-star selection at the Bell Centre in Montreal told the tale of why this game, a 5-2 Flyers victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Hockey Night in Canada, was a hopeful sign for Philadelphia. The selections were swept by young Flyers players.

The night's third star was 20-year-old Flyers rookie goaltender Carter Hart. The highly touted netminder singlehandedly kept the game scoreless through a first period in which Philly was outshot by a 12-1 margin; a pace that continued into the early minutes of the second period before the Flyers finally started to generate some sustained attack of their own. Hart took a shutout bid into the third period before finishing with 33 saves on 35 shots.

The second star was 21-year-old Flyers right winger Travis Konecny. The third-year NHLer has recently started to work through an offensive dry spell. On Saturday night, he had a goal and an assist along with three shots on goal and seven shot attempts. Konecny's goal broke a scoreless deadlock in the second period.

The first star was 20-year-old Flyers center Nolan Patrick. Now that he finally broke out of his prolonged offensive drought, Patrick is playing with soaring confidence with the puck. Two games after a breakout four-point night (two goals, two assists) against the Minnesota Wild, the second overall pick of the 2017 NHL Draft, scored two goals in the third period of Saturday night's game in Montreal. The latter of the two of highlight-reel material.

Other young players on the team also played prominent roles in the win in terms of how many minutes they played: in some cases a sharp uptick from their ice time earlier this season under now-former head coach Dave Hakstol as compared to Gordon.

Although 22-year-old Oskar Lindblom did not get on the score-sheet on Saturday night (all three of his shot attempts got blocked), he was coming off a goal and an assist against the Boston Bruins in the Flyers' previous game. In Montreal, he logged 18:23 of ice time, including nearly three combined minutes of special teams duty for interim head coach Scott Gordon's club.

Likewise, 22-year-old defenseman Travis Sanheim did not record a point on this night but pulled down 21:28 of ice time with five blocked shots and two shots on goal. His defense partner, 22-year-old Ivan Provorov, as usual led the Flyers in total ice time (23:58).

The Flyers goals were scored off the sticks of Konecny (12th), the red-hot James van Riemsdyk (12th overall; sixth goal and eighth point in five games), Patrick (8th and 9th) and Michael Raffl (empty net, 3rd). Coming off a hat trick against Boston on Thursday, Sean Couturier notched two assists in Montreal. Shayne Gostisbehere had a two-assist game as well.

Konecny's tally was scored on the rebound of a Gostisbehere shot at 17:01 of the second period. JVR made it 2-0 at 18:34 with a re-direct from the slot as Robert Hägg put the puck at the net. Patrick's first goal, scored at 7:06 of the third period, finished off a 2-on-1 patiently set up by Wayne Simmonds. Patrick's second goal, which built a 4-1 lead at 9:32 of the third period, saw him stickhandle around defenders and then snap off a shot that found the mark. Raffl's empty-netter in the final minute sealed a three-goal margin of victory.

For Montreal, Maxi Domi (16th) and defenseman Brett Kulak (3rd) accounted for the goals respectively scored at 7:36 and 16:00 of the third period. Domi's goal, scored off the near-side post and into the net from near the right hash marks, came off a Flyers turnover. The Kulak goal came in a loose-puck scramble around the net in which the Montreal defenseman was the only one there to claim a Brendan Gallagher rebound.

Antti Niemi got the start in goal for Montreal. He stopped 19 of 23 shots in a losing cause.

Special teams did not come into play until the second and third periods. Flyers went 0-for-2 on the power play and 1-for-1 on the penalty kill. Philly's strong kill of a Jakub Voracek interference penalty in the second period proved to be a momentum-builder .

In the immediate context, the win served to move the Flyers (19-23-6) out of last place in the Eastern Conference heading into their bye week and the NHL All-Star break. The team has won three straight games for only the second time this season and went 4-1-0 in the final five games heading into their schedule hiatus.

The Flyers' primary goal at this point isn't to "rescue" the 2018-19 season. The 14-point gap below the wildcard playoff cutoff line is too step to make up in 34 games. There are too many teams (five at present) to leapfrog to be the lower wildcard team and draw Tampa Bay as the first-round playoff opponent. There's a 15-point gap to be the higher wildcard seed.

Rather, the Flyers' goal for the rest of the season is a bigger-picture one. The team must put itself in position to be a much harder team to play against moving forward -- a team with emerging youth and a deep farm system beneath it, a lot of upcoming cap space flexibility and trading capital leading up to it.

The Flyers are going to be a lottery team, in all likelihood. If they ultimately get lucky in the 2019 NHL Draft lottery after the season, so much the better. However, the NHL lottery system is designed to discourage tanking. Even for the 31st-place team, there's only 18.5 percent odds of getting the first pick (49.6 chance of picking in the top three) as compared to a 50.6 percent chance of picking 4th.

In the meantime, there would be a lot of collateral damage to the Flyers' long-term hopes if they do wind up finishing last. It would not simply entail trading off some veteran impending unrestricted free agents, including Simmonds and Raffl. It was also mean that Provorov and Gostisbehere have second halves that are like their play in the first half. It would mean Patrick goes back to struggling offensively. It would mean that Hart hits a wall and the goaltending instability of the first half returns. It would mean Lindblom's recent assertiveness dissipates.

Additionally, it could mean another drought like the one Konecny and JVR went through prior to their respective very brief demotions to the fourth line and surges thereafter. It would mean that the Flyers go back to pinning all of their hopes on Claude Giroux, Couturier or Voracek to carry the offensive burden.

Basically, in just over half a season, the Flyers dropped to the bottom of the NHL from a 98-point season last year because they hit with the full brunt of a perfect storm of hugely disappointing all-around performance -- starting with the goalie carousel and struggles atop the blueline but also running deep through much of the forward corps underneath Giroux, not to mention the penalty kill in the first quarter of the season and the power play most of the season to date -- along with injuries.

There were changes behind the bench, with the replacement of the head coach Hakstol and assistant coach in charge of the defensemen Gord Murphy with Scott Gordon and Rick Wilson, who have starkly contrasting personalities and systematic preferences that had to be gradually implemented on the fly. There's been an even more dramatic change in the front office with the acrimonious dismissal of general manager Ron Hextall and collateral damage that took out assistant general manager Chris Pryor and the fast-tracked hirings of Chuck Fletcher as GM and Brent Flahr as assistant GM.

Coming on Monday: A blog on what the next steps for the Flyers are likely to be.

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Phantoms: Lyon Lifts LV to Shootout Win vs. Amerks

It took a 7-for-7 night on the penalty kill, a stellar goaltending performance by Alex Lyon and for the skills competition to go in their favor but the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (22-15-4) skated off the PPL Center ice with two points in their pocket as they defeated the Rochester Americans (24-13-3) via shootout, 3-2, on Saturday evening.

Lyon stopped 49 of 51 shots during regulation and overtime (two saves) before going 3-for-3 in the shootout to earn the win. He made at least 15 saves in every regulation period.

Connor Bunnaman (12th goal of the season) and Greg Carey (19th) scored 2nd period goals for the Phantoms. Mike Huntebrinker's first-round goal in the shootout proved the lone successful attempt for either side. Bunnaman's breakaway tally gave the rookie center goals in four straight games, and a six-game point streak (five goals, two assists, seven points).

Saturday's game in Allentown marked the first time Taylor Leier and Justin Bailey played against their respective former teams following Thursday's trade that saw the Flyers and Sabres organizations swap the two players in a one-for-one exchange.

The Phantoms entered the game with the top-ranked penalty kill in the American Hockey League at an 86.6 percent success rate. In going 7-for-7 on Saturday, the Phantoms improved to 87.2 overall on the PK.
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