TAMPA, Fla. — The Flyers are picking the right time to get hot.
For the second straight game, they held the defending Eastern Conference champion Tampa Bay Lightning to fewer than 20 shots.
They got an important 3-1 win Friday night over the Lightning with power-play goals from Sam Gagner and Matt Read, and another goal from Brayden Schenn, who is arguably enjoying the best season of his career.
“We’re just going game to game, and we played a good road game,” Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said. “We were a hard to team to play against with the puck.”
The Flyers have cranked up the defense after a 4-0 clunker loss to Edmonton at home on March 3. In the three games since, all wins by Steve Mason, Flyers opponents have a combined 56 shots on goal.
Mason got plenty of help after the Flyers built a 3-0 lead. The only thing he did not get was the shutout, but he did get the victory as the Flyers made it six wins in seven games.
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“It’s been a great effort. It makes the goaltending job very controlled and pretty straightforward,” Mason said. “The effort that the guys have put forth has been great. We need to keep it up.”
Hakstol considered it mission accomplished -- for this night. His plan to start Michal Neuvirth against the Panthers may change.
Tampa Bay had some early pressure in the third, but went 9½ minutes before Mason had to make a save. The Flyers hardly looked like a team that had not won at Amalie Arena in five years.
“I think we’re a confident group right now. Everyone’s buying in, playing their roles, doing their jobs and that’s resulting in wins,” Schenn said. “It’s nice to come here. It’s not an easy building to play in, especially our team seemed to struggle here a little bit. So it’s nice to come here and get two points.”
To say the Flyers had struggled in Tampa is a gross understatement. They hadn't beaten the Lightning on the road since a 4-3 shootout win back on Feb. 15 of 2011.
Read liked the effort of the power play on his tally early in the second period.
“Whitey (Ryan White) had a good screen and it went in,” Read said. “We talked about getting shots to the net. It’s good to get a nice bit of confidence. We have to keep doing the things that make us successful.”
After missing on 15 straight, the Flyers have converted three of their last four, with the miss coming on the front end of a double-minor Friday.
“If they kill that, it breaks our momentum,” Read said. “We scored a goal and it put them on their heels.”
On the first goal, Gagner was the last Flyer to get a stick on the puck. It appeared to be an own goal from Tampa Bay’s J.T. Brown.
Gagner, on a line with Michael Raffl and Sean Couturier, likes the chemistry among the trio and did not mind the extra details.
“There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it, and I’m enjoying that,” Gagner said. “We just have to keep pushing here. Every game means something at this time of year.”
The final shot total was 22-19 in favor of the Flyers, who blocked 20 Tampa Bay shots. Andy MacDonald had more blocks (10) than all Lightning players (8).
“You got to skate and you got to check, and our guys did that,” Hakstol said. “We blocked pucks at critical times, and you need to do the little things to have a chance on the road against a very good team.”
Fittingly, the music blaring in the Flyers' locker room was that of “Get Down Tonight” by KC and the Sunshine Band -- a prominent band from the 1970’s based in South Florida.
That’s where the Flyers will be Saturday night when they finish off their back-to-back set against the Florida Panthers.