The Broad Street Blog

Today’s mati­nee was a chance for the Fly­ers to get back at the Boston Bru­ins who beat them Wednes­day night in Philadel­phia. A case of the Flu has been doing dam­age to the Fly­ers’ locker room and for the third straight game play­ers were out of the lineup because of it. Mike Richards and Scot­tie Upshall both missed their sec­ond straight games. Bray­don Coburn returned to the lineup after miss­ing two games because of the Flu.

Much like early in Wednes­day night’s game, in the first part of the first period both teams looked evenly matched. The Bru­ins opened the scor­ing about five min­utes in, but the Fly­ers answered back with a power play goal by Simon Gagne.

How­ever, much like the third period of Wednesday’s game, the Bru­ins took it to the Fly­ers and got two goals only 8 sec­onds apart in the last minute of the first period. That was the end of Mar­tin Biron’s day as he was pulled at the end of the period.

Instead of rolling over and dying, the Fly­ers fought back and got two goals to tie the game in the early part of the sec­ond period. Glen Met­ro­polit got his sec­ond of the sea­son and Scott Hart­nell got the Fly­ers third goal, his 20th of the season. 

Through the sec­ond and third peri­ods, Antero Niit­ty­maki, in place of Biron, would stop every­thing sent his way by the Bru­ins. Things got inter­est­ing in the final min­utes of reg­u­la­tion. Niit­ty­maki, try­ing to bat a puck away, knocked it out of play and was called for delay of game. On the ensu­ing penalty kill the Fly­ers got two short­handed chances, the first by Jeff Carter and the sec­ond by Gagne, but failed to convert.

They would start the over­time ses­sion killing off the remain­ing por­tion of the penalty. Randy Jones, who was booed at every chance by the Boston fans, gave them more rea­son to boo him by scor­ing the win­ning goal. He threw it at the net from the blue line to see it deflect off a Bruin and in.

Jof­frey Lupul and Jeff Carter both got assists on the game tying goal by Hart­nell. It was Lupul’s 100th career assist and Carter’s 54th point of the sea­son, a career high. He would add another point with an assist on Jones’ game winner. 

High­lights
Game Sum­mary
Box Score