It Took 65 Minutes and 7 Rounds of Shootouts, But Flyers Finally Beat Lightning

Where do you begin after a game like that? I suppose the most logical place to start is the end. The Flyers, who lost all three prior meetings with Tampa Bay this season, beat the Lightning 4-3.

There were blown leads, a Gordie Howe hat trick by one of the unlikeliest Flyers, a converted shorthanded penalty shot by a Flyer fourth-liner, oh and the debut of the newly acquired Kris Versteeg. So, pretty much just your averaged mid-February regular season NHL game.

Peter Laviolette wasted no time introducing Versteeg into the lineup as the new #10 joined Mike Richards and Andreas Nodl for the first shift of the game. As expected, the Hatnell-Briere-Leino line remained together. James van Riemsdyk skated on a line with Claude Giroux and Jeff Carter. Dan Carcillo, Blair Betts, and Darrol Powe made up the fourth line. So, at least on this night the answer to the who would the Flyers scratch question was Nikolay Zherdev and Jody Shelley.

Versteeg was fairly quiet throughout, but showed a few glimpses on the forecheck. He had a chance to win it in the shootout, but was unable to beat Dwayne Roloson.

One of the main pregame talking points centered around the manner in which the Flyers would attack Tampa's passive 1-3-1 defensive posture. We saw early that Lavvy instructed his defensemen to slow down the transition game and wait for the center to circle behind and pick up speed in order to attack Tampa with pace. Richards, Giroux, and Briere repeatedly hit the Lighting blue line with a head of steam.

Former Flyer and current Lightning defenseman Randy Jones broke up one such foray into the zone by going low on Giroux. JVR, who happened to be in the area, immediately gave Jones a shoulder in retribution for going low on Giroux.

Jones must have had a guilty conscience because he immediately dropped the gloves and away JVR went on his first NHL fight. There really weren't many punches thrown, but JVR defended his teammate, picked up his first five for fighting, and was 1/3rd of the way to his first Gordie How hat trick.

A bit over five minutes later Riemer was the beneficiary of a tremendous backhand pass from Giroux and put the Flyers up 1-0. Jeff Carter got things going by winning the puck behind the Tampa net and moving it over to Giroux, who played a Giroux plate special onto the stick of van Riemsdyk. Fight? Check. Goal? Check.

 

In what was a harbinger of things to come Tampa battled back to tie the game. Andrej Meszaros turned the puck over in his own zone, which was picked up by Adam Hall. Hall played a quick pass to Domonic Moore, who beat Brian Boucher with a quick turn around shot from the right faceoff dot.

The Flyers then snapped an 0-13 power play streak against Tampa when van Riemsdyk completed the Gordie Howe hat trick by picking up an assist. He fired a wrist shot towards the net, where Hartnell was parked and deflected the puck past Dwayne Roloson.

 

Things got really interesting after that when the Flyers went on the penalty kill. Powe was sprung on a shorthanded breakaway when Steven Stamkos dove to break up the play. The official whistled the play dead and immediately pointed towards center ice to indicate he'd awarded a penalty shot.

I was busy thinking about how I'd much rather Stamkos be off the ice to serve the 2:00 minutes as Powe began his approach on the penalty shot. I figured there was no way he'd beat Roloson on a breakaway. Oh how wrong I was. Here, watch just how wrong I was...

 

The celebration was short-lived as the Lightning converted on the remaining power play time. In a strange sequence of events Tampa controlled the puck in their offensive zone when for no reason the goal horn sounded. Shortly thereafter Vincent Lecavalier deflected a shot from Marc-Andre Bergeron to pull the Bolts to within 3-2.

Less than a minute later potential new Flyer-killer candidate Teddy Purcell snapped a nasty wrist shot past Boucher. Meszaros, thinking the Flyers regained the puck headed up ice, and got caught too high as Pavel Kubina spotted Purcell with a nice diagonal cross ice pass. Purcell made no mistake and leveled the score 3-3.

 

The teams traded a few third peirod chances, but neither team was able to score a go-ahead goal in regulation. The most impressive player on the ice over the last five minutes of the period was clearly van Riemsdyk. He was seemingly on the ice for two straight minutes down the stretch. He won board battles, skated into high traffic areas, and generally outworked the Lightning for the puck.

The game went to a shootout where Roloson and Boucher took turns making ridiculous glove saves. Domonic Moore finally beat Boosh to put the Lightning up 1-0. Richards then kept the shootout going by beating Roloson on a crafty move where he quickly hit the brakes before firing the shootout equalizer (it was nice to see him successfully try something other than that backhand move he usually goes with).

Interestingly, Lighning coach Guy Boucher sent out four shooters (Victor Hedman, Moore, Hall, and Simon Gagne) before using Lecavalier, Stamkos, and St. Louis. A bit odd, no?

The goalies then combined to stop the next seven shooters before Kimmo Timonen finally beat Roloson with a series of backhand-to-forehand moves. St. Louis was then stoned by Boucher to secure the two points for the visitors. It was a big win over a conference foe who's nipping at their heels in the Eastern Conference standings.

Next, the Flyers stay in the Sunshine State as they head down to Miami to face the Panthers Wednesday night.

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