PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Now that\u2019s a first NHL goal for the storybook.<\/p>\n
Porter Martone scored his first goal as a Flyer at 2:31 of overtime Sunday to send the Flyers to a 2-1 win over the Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n
The Flyers move into the third spot in the Metropolitan Division standings, which keeps them in contention for a wild card spot. They jumped over the idle New York Islanders, who fired coach Patrick Roy Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
With five games remaining, the Flyers can end a five-year postseason drought with a decent showing in road games against New Jersey on Tuesday, Detroit on Thursday and Winnipeg on Saturday, plus season-ending home games against Carolina and Montreal. The Devils are almost eliminated from playoff content. Detroit has lost 12 of 20 games to imperil their playoff chances.<\/p>\n
After putting home the winning goal on a 5-on-3 power play, Martone raced away from the Boston net in celebration and was soon mobbed by teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was pretty awesome,\u201d Martone said. \u201cPretty rare that ever happens. Devo (Christian Dvorak) made a good play to me in the middle. Just buried the rebound \u2026 to see that crowd pop, that\u2019s a big two points for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
And to think a week ago, the 19-year-old was playing college hockey for Michigan State.<\/p>\n
Scoring a game-winner for his first NHL goal was memorable, but executing it in these circumstances made it even more special.<\/p>\n
\u201cOvertime winner, first NHL goal, that\u2019s pretty special,\u201d Martone said. \u201cJust keep playing my game, it\u2019s who I am. My linemates have been setting me up special. It\u2019s nice to see that one go in.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Trevor) Zegras got me in a pretty good headlock there. I really didn\u2019t get to see it (the crowd reaction) much. It was awesome to get that win in front of these fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
All around the Flyers\u2019 locker room, veteran players were smiling. Safe to say they felt good for the kid. Martone has only played four NHL games but looks like a battle-tested veteran.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot easy to do,\u201d Dvorak said. \u201cComing from college right into a playoff race, so that\u2019s very impressive. Big body, smart, high hockey IQ player. That\u2019s really important in this league. It\u2019s been great to play with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noah Cates feels the same way.<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of like Tyson (Foerster) out there, got a good stick, long stick,\u201d Cates said. \u201cFor him to get that goal is awesome. He\u2019s helped us, that\u2019s the biggest thing. Especially for a younger kid, to come in and help us, bring energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goaltender Dan Vladar turned in another strong performance with 18 saves. As someone who tries to stop the league\u2019s best shooters, he can appreciate Martone\u2019s talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a great player,\u201d Vladar said. \u201cWe are so excited to have him here. He\u2019s been bringing a lot of energy. We knew even before he came here he was going to be great for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martone\u2019s calm, steady approach to the game is what has caught coach Rick Tocchet\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe loves the game, even on the bench, you tell him something, he\u2019s a very engaged kid,\u201d Tocchet said. \u201cHe\u2019s not afraid to say something. Talking about the power play, he\u2019ll say \u2018I\u2019ll be here, you be here.\u2019 I like that \u2026 a young kid doing that. So you can tell he\u2019s been around, he\u2019s just a hockey player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading 1-0 going into the third period, the Flyers surrendered a power-play goal to Pavel Zacha 35 seconds in. That extended the Flyers streak of not having a shutout to 116 games, the second-longest in team history.<\/p>\n
The Flyers jumped on the Bruins early and held them to just three shots for the period. Martone helped the Flyers get on the scoreboard first by triggering a two-on-one for\u00a0 Dvorak and Travis Konecny. Dvorak faked a pass to Konecny, then buried a shot past Joonas Korpisalo at 4:19.<\/p>\n
The pass from Martone was a well-placed, between-the-legs delivery off the boards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s something I worked on a lot this year,\u201d Martone said. \u201cDrawing my wall play, not just in college but in the pros. He (Dvorak) had a really shot there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense took over in the second period. The Bruins got 11 shots, many from low danger areas.<\/p>\n
NOTES >> Denver Barkey was scratched for a second straight game. \u2026 Matvei Michkov\u2019s three-point game in Friday night\u2019s 4-1 win at Long Island was the seventh of his career. Only five players (Eric Lindros, Peter Zezel, Ken Linseman, Bill Barber and Mel Bridgman) have had more at his age. \u2026 Travis Sanheim needs just one more goal to tie Ivan Provorov (65) for fourth place for goals by a Flyer defenseman. Mark Howe holds the record with 138.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Now that\u2019s a first NHL goal for the storybook. Porter Martone scored his first goal as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4,43,6490],"class_list":{"0":"post-543539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-hzs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116357057952483651","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}