The Flyers just mauled the Carolina Hurricanes at the RBC Center in Raleigh by an 8-1 count. Despite the dominance and the increasingly empty building, they played all the way until the final whistle and extended their streak without a straight loss to the Hurricanes to 17 (14-0-3). Damn near impossible to pick a star of this game, because so many Flyers did just about everything right.
Jeff Carter earned himself the most anticlimactic hat trick we've seen in a while, Danny Briere had a pair of his own, Claude Giroux assisted on two goals with great plays, Ville Leino worked his ass off for a brilliant night that won't show up on the scoresheet, and Sergei Bobrovsky and his defense nearly pitched a shutout.
Highlights and video after the jump.
It's easy to focus on what led to the 8 in the score, but let's start with the 1, and the tweet of the night by @ThatBeerSnob, talking about Bobrovsky's performance:
?Even on a night when they don't NEED him to be a stud, he still is.?
Bob had 35 saves on 36 shots, eating up angles and still finding a way to get in position to stop rebounds. Watch how demoralized Chad LaRose's slumpy body language is after he gets stoned like a character in The Lottery.
Briere's line got the scoring tempo started in the first, although the presumed opener was taken off the board after it was deemed Scott Hartnell directed a brilliant Leino pass in with a distinct kicking motion. Looked to me more like he purposefully moved his skate into the perfect spot to redirect it, rather than kick the puck, but I'm not getting the big War Room bucks. What'd you all think? Kick or no?
The line didn't hang their heads over it though, scoring on their next shift. Once again, Leino was the feeder, finding an open Briere sitting on the back doorstep from whence he rarely misses.
That's great finishing from in close by Danny, but that goal was all Leino. He drew the attention behind the net and into the circle, then fed a perfect pass through traffic to a wide open Briere.
Nik Zherdev earned the Flyers a power play by suckering the Hurricanes into taking a dumb penalty. He rifled a long shot in on Cam Ward, then subtly slewfooted a Carolina defender to the ice on his way past the net. Erik Cole responded immediately by plastering Zherdev into the boards, giving the Flyers a man advantage. They won the ensuing draw, another prominent storyline in this game, and Chris Pronger unloaded a point shot into a crowd that included a pair of Flyers camped out in front of Ward. One of them was Carter, who dunked it.
Carter would score the next Flyers goal too, but we wouldn't know it was his until after he'd scored again, and a scoring change on the Flyers' third goal was made from Andrej Meszaros to Carter. Giroux accepted a great pass, glided in on Ward, got a little too far past him, but rather than bail on the play, he slid it behind Ward and into the slot, and it was drawn back to Meszaros, who put it on goal.
What we didn't know initially was that Carter tipped it in. Would have been nice to see Meszaros finally get his first goal as a Flyer after having a few come very close, but we'll take the no-hats hat trick for Carter.
Carter's third came on another power play, this time on a much cleaner shot than the first two. While still on a 4-on-4, the Hurricanes overskated their ability to get back, lost the puck just as Zherdev was coming out of the box, and Carter skated in on a 2-on-1 with Zherdev. Hepaused for just a second as though he might dish it, which made Ward cheat off the short-side post, and it was just enough for Carter to snipe one. Gorgeous. Danny had the assist on that one, his 300th career helper. Exit stage left for Ward.
Giroux and Mike Richards were menacing on the penalty kill, and some great work by Richie while shorthanded actually earned the Flyers the power play that generated Carter's third goal. In the third period, more pressure by the best shorthanded duo in hockey led directly to a goal, when Richie nearly scored on a breakaway, then Giroux caught a terrible clearing attempt near the blue line, skated it in, and found Richards with a pass he buried behind Justin Peters for the Flyers' fifth of the night. Mr. Cheeks would tell ya to give it up for the shortie:
How much fun does it have to be to play with Giroux?
And hey, speaking of AWFUL, half-assed clearing attempts...
Some might think it a tad unsportsmanlike to run up the score, but hockey's a tough sport to lay off in, especially with a team just falling apart like the Hurricanes did. Plus, you never want to see a team play at half speed for any part of a game, regardless of the score, and one of the most encouraging signs in this one (and there were many to choose from) was that the Flyers played hard for 60 minutes. They'd add two more goals in this one, seemingly energized that LaRose had the gall to ruin Bobrovsky's shutout bid.
Briere scored his second on the strength of some hard work by Scott Hartnell and Jody Shelley, and Zherdev closed it out with a no-doubt breakaway on Peters.
As soon as he hit the open space, you knew he was going to score.
A few final points in brief:
Hard to believe after seeing all that, but the Flyers were actually outshot in this one, 36-26. Philadelphia did win 11 more faceoffs though.
Carter's three goals came on just 12:36 of ice time, with the Flyers getting some minutes for lower liners late in the game (and not losing a step).
Jody Shelley skated for 12 minutes, led the team with 8 hits, and got his first point of the season on the second Briere goal.
Blair Betts somehow managed to be a -1 in an 8-1 game. That's just bad luck right there.
Dan Carcillo had the least amount of ice time among Flyers forwards, but he did spend 5 minutes in the box after obliging Tom Kostopoulos (and tuning him up).
Perfect start to a difficult run of games. Despite the total team effort, there should be plenty left in the tank for the busy upcoming schedule.
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