The way things have been happening in threes lately for the Flyers, this might have been a bad one.
Instead it barely turned out to be a good one, but a win is a win nonetheless for a team returning from a road trip through the state of Florida that saw them leave empty handed.
On today’s early Black Friday NHL contest, the Philadelphia Flyers decided to get things done early on the scoreboard as well, ad Scott Hartnell, on a slick line change, snagged the puck and drove it home past Jets goalie Ondrej Pavalec just a minute into the game, and that is where the score would stay throughout the rest of the first period. The game began very unbalanced for the Jets as the Flyers would dominate them in shots on goal by a staggering 13-2 differential, and Winnipeg found themselves in the penalty box a whopping four times.
Fortune had other plans for those statistics however, as the 2nd and 3rd periods would attest.
Moving through the second period the Flyers found the ice tilting a little in the Jets favor, this despite Sean Couturier’s ridiculous short handed goal on a sweet block and steal from the Jets point. Even with a now respectable 2-0 lead, the Jets did not look out of it, and the Flyers bad habits started to creep in once again. Just as the 1st period saw Winnipeg going to the box more than a couple times, this time it was the Flyers turn, all three calls for intereference, and two of them were pretty bad calls by the referees. On the first interference, Vincent Lecavalier was basically taken down while he was on the offensive by Tobias Enstrom, who tangled up with Lecavalier while he was making a move towards the net on a play in development. Completely backwards call, and it perhaps led to the other backwards call when later in the 2nd, Wayne Simmonds found himself tangled up with Mark Stuart, who in some two wrongs make a right maneuver, called embellishment on Stuart at the same time, resulting in 4 on 4 hockey.
This wouldn’t be the last time the referees exerted their influence on the game though, as the 3rd period simply got crazier.
With the Flyers now clinging to what is commonly known as the unsafest lead to possess in sports and now whittling desperately away at the clock to keep the Jets at bay, the referees and the Flyers made a couple of goofy moves. Halfway through the period, Steve Downie was called for a cross check on Stuart, and then a few minutes later, right after managing to kill that penalty, Andrej Meszaros, perhaps the most disliked Flyer among the fan base at this present time, committed a bonehead penalty to send the Flyer right back on the PK.
This would prove costly as Michael Frolik of the Jets took advantage of a worn out Flyers unit just off virtually back to back penalty kills, and snuck one past goalie Steve Mason, who was working like a madman in net for another shut out opportunity. There were a couple of plays the referees simply let go on behalf of the Jets, and for a bit it just gave people watching the game in Philly that old familiar fear: the referees are going to try and win this one for the other team because it’s Philly.
For all the scares though, the Flyers managed to have enough gas in the tank to stave the Jets off to secure a much needed victory, bringing them back to within one of .500 again. The hardest part of this game is the fact that the Flyers will now travel for their next six games, beginning with a contest tomorrow evening against the always tough Nashville Predators, and almost-was Flyer himself, Shea Weber.
Can they make it two? We shall see, but the penalties must diminish a bit, and Berube is better off healthy scratching Meszaros forever if he can help it.
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