The Flyers lost to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday night 3-1 and then beat the Tampa Bay Lightning the next night 4-3.
A couple things about the games first being that Peter Forsberg played. He was expected to be out till the weekend but did play both games about 20 minutes in each.
The Flyers franchise losing streak record ended at 10 games with the win over the Lightning. I am glad it is over.
Against the Panthers Kyle Calder scored the only Flyers goal on the Power Play. The Flyers did kill all 6 Panther power plays if one is looking for some positives out the poor performance. Antero Niittymaki stopped 22 of 24 shots thru 2 periods and sat out the third with Robert Esche in net. Niitty left with a hip strain. Esche stopped 8 of 9 shots.
Niitty is set to get his next cortisone shot today.
Ed Belfour for the Panthers stopped 23 of 24 Flyers shots as the Flyers were out shot again.
One fighting penalty called in the game with Ben Eager vs. Steve Montador. It wasn’t even a fight. Eager never dropped his gloves and Montador maybe tried to throw 1 punch and less then 10 seconds of wrestling. Eager gets a 5 minute major and Montador gets 2 for instigating, 5 for fighting and a 10 minute misconduct all crap calls. I just love this new NHL.
Forsberg, Knuble, Gagne, Pitkanen and Zhitnik were minus 2 for the game.
Rostislav Olesz, Martin Gelinas, and Mike Van Ryn were the three stars.
The next night against Tampa Bay the Flyers showed up and played some better hockey, more forchecking, and more energy.
Alexi Zhitnik scored his first goal as a Flyer, Sami Kapenen also scored both on the Power Play. Simon Gagne added 2 goals.
The Flyers were again out shot 45 to 26. Robert Esche got his first start in goal since coming back from injury stopping 42 of 45 shots. Giving up 3 goals has been typical this year for the Flyers, what hasn’t been is actually scoring 4 or more goals. Looking at the stats and comparing them to last year the lack of scoring is the stat that stands out most.
Gagne, Forsberg and Knuble this game was +2. Alexandre Picard led the team at +3.
Gagne, Forsberg and Esche were the three stars for the game.