Flyers break their 4 game losing streak by beating the Canadiens in Philly 5-4 going to a shootout last night. Peter Forsberg PP, RJ Umberger PP, Eric Desjardins and Joni Pitkanen scored for the Flyers. Scoring in the shootout for the Flyers were Forsberg and Nedved.

Robert Esche got the start in goal, at times looking great and other times looking average giving up 4 goals on 36 shots. It was hard to get a read on exactly how well the Flyers played, OLN’s fault, more on that later. But looking at the stats, out shot, out hit and out played on special teams again, but good enough to squeak out a win. Not often does a team give up 3 goals in the third period and win, but last night the Flyer’s did just that.
Is this the turnaround, the confidence the Flyers needed? I’m not holding my breath.

Three stars for the game were Peter Forsberg, Simon Gagne and Mike Ribeiro.

OLN is carrying NHL hockey games instead of ESPN this year. Plenty of people are not happy with it, but since I already get the channel not a big deal for me. OLN allocates 2 hours for hockey games and that is simply not enough time. I learned early in the season that when I need to record the game to also record the post game show since the game always runs over. ALWAYS run over.
Now last night I screwed up. I forget to check OLN for the game, figured it was just on Center Ice. So when I sat down to watch the game, nothing was recorded. I was frustrated at myself for missing the game. But wait, OLN replays the game at midnight. Great now I can catch the game. I set it up to record and watched it this morning.
“NHL on OLN: We believe in hockey” my ass.
Apparently when OLN replays the game at midnight, they make the game fit into the two hour time slot. They cut out the intermission chit-chat and whatever amount of actual play time to make it fit. For a game that went into overtime then a shootout a whole lot of hockey had to be cut out to make it fit into 2 hours. I dare say close to a whole period. Of course none of the commercials were cut. Game goes to commercial comes back 5 minutes later commentators are talking about the potentially bad hit on Gagne that is never shown. Game goes to commercial comes back 10 minutes later in the game and the Flyers are partially thru a 5-3 power play. What? How did that happen? It is hard to follow a game when every time there is a commercial break you lose a couple minutes of game time. What exactly is on OLN at 2am that can not be either pushed back or pre-empted for the game replay? For a network that “believes in hockey” very much bush-league.