FLYERS NEWS

The Flyers continued their current road trip as well tonight as they looked to string together back to back wins for the first time in a while. Considering they were in Carolina tonight, against the Hurricances, the Eastern conference's worst team thus far, that should have been no problem. It looked like, for 2nd and half periods, that for all intensive purposes it wouldn't be any problem. Micheal Leighton, in his 2nd start, took a shutout into the 3rd period, mostly on the strength of superb Flyer's defense. Meanwhile, Mike Richards and Jeff Carter each scored midway through the 1st period, and Danny Briere, yes Danny Briere scored on the power play, in his first goal in 10 games, to put the Flyers up 3-0 mdway though the 3rd period. Then wheels came loose. The Flyers suddenly simply started trying to keep Carolina out of their zone and run out the clock after that, which is fine for a team relies on its defense. Unfortunately, they did poor job of keeping the Canes out of the zone and a couple power plays and bad bounces later, Carolina had come all the way back to tie it up at 3 and send the game into overtime. You would think at that point the Flyers would have been deflated, instead they actually picked up their energy in the overtime period, but neither they nor the Canes could score in overtime, so it came down to a shootout which usually bad news for the Flyers, but not on this night. Leighton opened the shootout with a spectacular glove save of Tuomo Ruutu. Then Danny Briere opened the shooting for the Flyers with a score. Next Leighton got just enough of a Jussi Jokinen's attempt to knock it off the post out of harm's way. So Mike Richard's took the ice with a chance to seal the victory and he did beating Cam Ward right through the five hole for the 4-3 win. Thus, in the end ex-Cane Leighton and for Canes' coach Peter Lavoliette got revenge on the team that had given up on them and the Flyers got their 2nd win in a row in dramatic fashion. The Flyers are now 17-18-2 overall, for 36 points, just 4 out of 8th in the Eastern conference.