After winning a thriller last night the Flyers jumped on a train to New York this morning for a key afternoon matchup with the Rangers, who are currently 9th in the East. Thus, a win in this one would have given the Flyers more breathing room in the Eastern conference playoff race, and meant less win until they clinch a playoff spot. Unfortunately, they Orange and Black had a little trouble on the train on the way to the game and apparently they gave out pretty much all the energy they had to win last night. Peter Lavoliette also made the curious decision to bench Daroll Powe and Ville Leino, in favor of Aaron Asham and ex enforcer Riley Cote who hadn't played in over 30 games. Apparently he did so to counteract the decision by the Rangers to dress pest Sean Avery and occasional Ranger enforcer Jody Shelley. The move backfired as the Flyers focused a little too much on engaging the Rangers and trying to get Avery out of the game. As a result Avery was able to draw a couple of Flyer's penalties and turn them into game changing goals.
The Flyers actually led early 1-0 on a Danny Briere power play goal, but thanks Avery New York rallied ahead 2-1 in the 2nd period. From there fatigue seemed to set in for the Flyers as they coudn't get anything going in the 3rd period. They tried put together a few rushes into the New York zone and they had a couple power play opportunities, but none of it amounted to much. The Orange and Black just looked totally gassed through all of it and wound up with only 5 shots on goal. They just didn't seem to have enough left in the tank to sustain anything. Somehow, thanks to the superb play of Micheal Leighton they hung in there, until there were about 6 minutes to play. Then you guessed it, Avery scored on a power play to put them away 3-1. So in all it was a disheartening way to follow such a thrilling victory, but not the end of the world either. Even with the loss the Flyers are still 6th in the East, but now they have only 5 point cushion over the Rangers so they'll have to work just a little harder to lock up a playoff berth.
2 comments:
The way I see it as long as the Flyers dont play either Pittsburgh or Washington in the first round of the playoffs they're are set for a Stanley Cup push so they need to stop dropping these games and keep their spot.
-to ph1llysports
yeah they really need that 6th spot to have any chance of getting past the 1st round.
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