ELMONT, N.Y. — Despite giving up a 3-0 lead, the Flyers turned the lights back on when it mattered most Friday to defeat the New York Islanders 4-3 in a shootout.
Trevor Zegras and Travis Konecny scored in the shootout, and goaltender Sam Ersson stopped Islanders’ Bo Horvat to clinch the game.
The Flyers are a perfect 5-0 in shootouts this season. They have won two straight and four of their past five games overall.
“There’s going to be ups and downs throughout the course of a game and a season,” defenseman Travis Sanheim said of the Flyers’ resiliency. “Just resetting and getting your head back on straight and sticking with what’s been working for you, and just get back to your game.”
Pressure
Ersson allowed three goals on 13 shots in the second period, but he came up big in the third, stopping all nine, and saved three more in overtime. Then, he stopped the final shot in the shootout to seal the win. The Swedish netminder is now 12-3 in the skills competition.
“Yeah, there could be some prescout on him,” coach Rick Tocchet said about Ersson’s expertise in the shootout. “He looks big when you go down, and I’m watching like, I don’t know much about Erss this year, but he looks big in the net on those breakaways. He just looks big, it looks like there’s not room, and there could be some psychology when it comes to that.”
But it was the saves that Ersson made across the first 60 minutes that kept the Flyers in the game. He made a nifty save on a Jonathan Drouin tip-in attempt off a Scott Mayfield shot from the point in the first period, before robbing Horvat’s one-timer at the right post in the second; Ersson slid across to make the split save off the tip of his left pad with the Flyers up 3-1.
In the third period, he made the biggest save of the night during a two-on-one. Islanders forward Anthony Duclair skated up the ice and made a move that saw Noah Juulsen fall. Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler went to Duclair, but he was able to drop the puck around Seeler to Calum Ritchie, who was stopped by Ersson.
After the save, Matvei Michkov carried Ritchie into the boards and hit him up high with his stick, resulting in a four-minute power play for the Islanders. The Flyers entered the game with the fourth-best penalty kill (86.2%) and held the Islanders, who entered the day with the 31st-ranked power play (12.6%) — but did have one power-play goal already — to six shot attempts. Ersson stopped two shots, one being a tricky tip-in attempt from Ritchie.
“You’ve got to give guys credit, because we’re hanging in there. That’s a [heck] of a PK,” Tocchet said. “It’s four minutes, that could be the game, and to me, that shows a lot of character. Those six guys with the four D, and Erss making those stops. You’ve got to be proud of the team for that, that PK.”
Ersson made a nice save on Drouin in the extra session before stopping his countryman, Simon Holmström, with the blocker. And then he did what he does best in the shootout — but not before Zegras did what he does best in the shootout.
Among players who have at least 15 shootout attempts, Zegras ranks No. 1 all-time at 68%. He has 17 goals on 25 shots, and has scored 70.6% of his shootout attempts on the road. Zegras is 4-for-4 this season.
“Especially when you have Trevor Zegras on your team, you start almost with one up. So we like our odds in shootouts, but at the same time, we don’t want to always be going to that point,” captain Sean Couturier said. “Regulation wins are huge down the road, so we’ve got to find a way to close those games out, and not give out points to, especially, divisional opponents, but at the same time, it’s a huge win.
“The way the game kind of went, we were all over them early, and then they get a goal there early in the second. And we kind of lost our cool for a little bit there. But, we regrouped in the third and stuck together and found a way to get that extra point.”
Just The Way You Are
Long Island’s Billy Joel famously sang, “Don’t go changing,” and while the Flyers made one significant change — it’s only the seventh time in 23 games this season they scored first, snapping a nine-game streak — there’s one aspect they shouldn’t. For the second straight game, Tyson Foerster and Couturier scored seconds apart.
On Wednesday, it gave the Flyers a 4-2 win against the two-time defending champion Florida Panthers when they scored 21 seconds apart. On Friday, their goals 22 seconds apart gave the Orange and Black a 2-0 lead.
Foerster opened the scoring 8 minutes, 30 seconds into the game. Sanheim got the puck in his own end, skated around the net, and carried it up the left wing with Islanders forward Emil Heineman hounding him.
He entered the zone and dished the puck to Konecny, who sent a turnaround pass right to Heineman. But it wasn’t a clean pass, and Foerster poked it away as the Swede fell. It gave Foerster the perfect shooting lane, and he beat Islanders goalie David Rittich glove side for his ninth goal of the season.
“Obviously, we’d like to do it more often,” Sanheim said about scoring first. “And, in saying that, when you get out to a good lead, you want to be able to keep your foot on the gas and not allow a team to get back into it. So just continue to keep growing and get better as a team.”
Couturier snapped a 17-game goal drought on Wednesday and scored in consecutive games for the first time since March of last season. His goal came after Juulsen defended New York’s Mathew Barzal against the wall in the Flyers’ zone, allowing Michkov to scoop up the loose puck.
Bobby Brink put pressure on Tony DeAngelo, causing the former Flyers defenseman to turn the puck over to Couturier, and the Flyers captain scored past the glove of Rittich from the left face-off circle.
An Innocent Man
Before getting to one of the worst calls this season — and there have been plenty to choose from — the Flyers looked in control when Zegras extended the lead to 3-0 on a power play 1:55 into the second period.
The New Yorker took the puck off the wall after Emil Andrae carried it deep and was stopped by Rittich. Zegras curled in the left circle and scored off the skate of Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock.
But then things started to go awry.
Heineman exacted some revenge and scored to make it 3-1. Andrae got the puck and skated backward into his own zone. He didn’t realize that Kyle Palmieri was still in the Flyers’ end after getting tangled up with Jamie Drysdale. Palmieri picked his pocket and fed Drouin, who dropped the puck for Heineman to finish.
The referees missed a call as the Islanders had six guys on the ice when Palmieri played the puck as he was skating to the bench.
Rookie sensation Matthew Schaeffer cut the Flyers’ lead to one with his eighth of the year. He got the puck at the left point and skated down into the left circle before firing off a wrister past Ersson. There was a delayed penalty on Garnet Hathaway, but the Islanders didn’t have the extra skater on yet.
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And then, with the momentum swinging in the Islanders’ favor, Konecny was called for a phantom hold on Holmström during a Flyers power play.
The call was questionable as Holmström sold it and the referee above the blue line — not the referee standing right in front of the players — made the call.
After skating four-on-four on the ensuing power play for the Islanders, Schaefer put a point shot that Max Shabanov tipped up and off the body of teammate Anders Lee past Ersson.
“Obviously, the second was a little bit, you know, some penalties, a couple of misfortune plays, but hung in there,” Tocchet said. “Little bit ugly, but give the guys credit for scratching and clawing. That’s a big two points for us.”
Breakaways
Palmieri did not return after playing a role in the Islanders’ first goal due to a lower-body injury. … Forward Nic Deslauriers and defenseman Egor Zamula were healthy scratches for the second straight game. They did participate in warmups. … Couturier played in his 896th NHL game, all with the Flyers.
Up next
The Flyers get right back to it on Saturday against the Devils in New Jersey (7 p.m., NBCSP).