PREVIEW 10:00 AM EDT
Looking to extend their winning streak to four straight games and get back to the .500 mark on the season, the Philadelphia Flyers (16-17-3) start a three-game road trip tonight against the Toronto Maple Leafs (20-12-4). The game starts at 7:00 p.m. and will be televised locally on CSN Philadelphia.
This is third and final meeting between the teams this season, and the second of two games in Toronto. On Feb 11, the host Leafs humiliated the Flyers, 5-2. Two weeks later, the Maple Leafs skated off with a 4-2 win at the Wells Fargo Center.
The Flyers have been a decent home team this season, sporting a 12-5-2 record. It has been a different story on the road. In away games, Philadelphia is 4-12-1. As a result, with 12 games remaining in the 48-game regular season, the Flyers find themselves four points behind the New Jersey Devils for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Philadelphia's recent mini winning streak has come despite the fact the team is severely depleted by injuries. Defenseman Nicklas Grossmann (upper body) is getting close to being cleared to return to the lineup, but fellow starting defensemen Braydon Coburn (separated left shoulder) and Andrej Meszaros (torn left rotator cuff) are done for the season.
The club has made due with an improved team-wide commitment to defense. Oft-maligned defenseman Bruno Gervais has surprisingly elevated his level of play while playing extended minutes in recent games, and recently acquired Kent Huskins has been steady if unspectacular as a third-pairing upgrade on Kurtis Foster. Callup players Erik Gustafsson, who scored the game-winning goal last night, and rookie Oliver Lauridsen (who has struggled a bit in the games since a solid NHL debut) have rounded out the starting blueline.
Up front, the Flyers remain without Danny Briere (concussion, out indefinitely) and Max Talbot (broken left leg, out for the season). Veteran checking line center Adam Hall, whom
the Flyers claimed off waivers from Tampa Bay yesterday, will join the team tonight.
There have been numerous fights in the Flyers-Maple Leafs games to date. As such, former Maple Leafs forward Jay Rosehill is expected to make his Flyers debut tonight. Zac Rinaldo sustained a possible ankle sprain last night, and could be out for a week or so.
Newly acquired goaltender Steve Mason, a former Calder Trophy winner who had fallen on hard times in Columbus in the seasons that followed his outstanding rookie year, will also join the Flyers tonight. Ilya Bryzgalov has started 20 straight games, so there is a good chance that Mason will make his Flyers' debut during the current road trip.
Toronto, which last reached the playoffs in 2004, is currently in fifth place in the Eastern Conference. The high-scoring Leafs, who are third in the East with 112 goals scored, have won their last three games to end a stretch of worrisome play. Overall, Toronto is 5-2-3 over its last 10 games. The Maple Leafs enter this game coming off a convincing 4-0 win in Ottawa. Toronto has averaged five goals per game over their last eight matches.
Newly acquired defenseman Ryan O'Byrne is expected to be ready to play for the Maple Leafs tonight.
PROJECTED LINEUPS
FLYERS
24 Matt Read - 28 Claude Giroux - 93 Jakub Voracek
19 Scott Hartnell - 10 Brayden Schenn - 17 Wayne Simmonds
12 Simon Gagne - 14 Sean Couturier - 9 Mike Knuble
37 Jay Rosehill - 26 Ruslan Fedotenko - 18 Adam Hall
44 Kimmo Timonen - 27 Bruno Gervais
38 Oliver Lauridsen - 22 Luke Schenn
23 Kent Huskins - 29 Erik Gustafsson
30 Ilya Bryzgalov / 35 Steve Mason
MAPLE LEAFS
21 James van Riemsdyk - 42 Tyler Bozak - 81 Phil Kessel
19 Joffrey Lupul - 43 Nazem Kadri - 41 Nikolai Kulemin
11 Jay McClement - 84 Mikhail Grabovski - 39 Matt Frattin
28 Colton Orr - 48 Ryan Hamilton - 38 Clarke MacArthur
36 Carl Gunnarsson - 3 Dion Phaneuf
24 John-Michael Liles - Ryan O'Byrne
45 Mark Fraser/ 53 Mike Kostka - 4 Cody Franson
34 James Reimer
[30 Ben Scrivens]
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FLYERS-HABS WRAPUP
A three-game winning streak is nothing spectacular, but it represents a breakthrough for the 2013 Philadelphia Flyers. Last night, the team completed a 3-1-1 homestand with a comeback 5-3 win over the Montreal Canadiens.
Showing the same newfound resiliency that propelled them to a third period comeback against Washington, the Flyers rebounded from deficits of 1-0 and 3-2 to score three unanswered goals in the latter part of the third period.
Erik Gustafsson's second career NHL proved to be the game winner. On the play, Gustafsson threw the puck at the net, with Matt Read parked in front. The puck deflected in off a Montreal defenseman. The winning goal was scored less than two minutes after a Wayne Simmonds skate deflection on the doorstep of Carey Price's net knotted the score at 3-3 with 5:06 remaining on the clock.
In the middle stanza, with the Flyers trailing 1-0, Sean Couturier ended his 28-game goal drought. The second-year center wristed a shot at the net, and the puck deflected in off the skate of Montreal defenseman P.K. Subban. Couturier had been getting close to scoring in recent games and was finally rewarded with a little bit of self-made good luck.
Philly briefly held a 2-1 lead in the latter stages of the second period. Oliver Lauridsen and Luke Schenn rotated the puck point-to-point and Schenn's wide shot deflected off the end board and came out directly into the left slot. Simon Gagne immediately pounced on the puck and slid it home before a slow-to-react Price was able to move laterally for the save. The goal was Gagne's third since rejoining the Flyers.
Montreal, which got a mid first period goal by defenseman Alexei Emelin on a shot through heavy traffic, did not take long to respond to the Gagne goal. Forty-six seconds after the Gagne goal, the Habs' fourth line took advantage of a breakdown in the Philadelphia zone. Brandon Prust took a pass from Jeff Halpern and slid a shot along the ice past Ilya Bryzgalov.
Twenty seconds after Prust tied the game at 2-2, David Desharnais gave the Habs their ill-fated 3-2 lead. His shot deflected in the air off the stick of Brayden Schenn and climbed over a ducking Bryzgalov.
The Flyers were outplayed in the opening period. However, they controlled the majority of the play over the final 40 minutes, outshooting Montreal 26-6 in the process. An early turning point was Philly successfully killing off three straight Montreal power plays in the first period and the opening two minutes of the second stanza. An emotional turning point came when Simmonds and Zac Rinaldo engaged in back-to-back fights with Travis Moen and Prust at the 2:13 and 2:15 marks of the middle period.
Coincidentally or not, the Flyers took over the territorial advantage thereafter. Unfortunately for the Flyers, they still skated off to the second intermission with a one-goal deficit but at least they felt like they were in the game.
Philly was frustrated in its efforts to stage a comeback on the scoreboard in the third period until Simmonds' ugly-but-good goal opened the floodgates in the final minutes. After Gustafsson gave the Flyers the lead, Read made an unselfish play to set up Jakub Voracek for an empty net goal that made it a 5-3 final.
The insurance goal was Voracek's team-leading 15th of the season. He also registered an assist on Gustafsson's game-winner.
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