The Flyers proved to be too much for Buffalo, scoring 4 goals in the 3rd Period

The Flyers pulled off a huge win last night against the Buffalo Sabres, lighting them up in the third. They went down early but regained their composure and took it to the Sabres. The Flyers carried the better of the play for most of the period. On the Sabres very first shot of the game they took the 1-0 lead. Maxim Afinogenov scored on a deflection at just 1:52 of the first period. The Flyers got 11 shots in the period, while Buffalo just managed 6. With just 14 seconds remaining in the first period Claude Giroux sent a pass across the net to Scott Hartnell who buried his 23rd goal of the season. It was a power play goal that sent the teams to intermission knotted at 1.

The second period was intense but had no scoring. The Sabres put 12 shots on Biron while the Flyers managed 11. The hits in the period were bone crushing. The Flyers came out banging in the period and landed 10 hits. The Sabres responded with 9 hits of their own. Other than some minor rough stuff, the period was rather uneventful.

In the third the Flyers absolutely took it to the Sabres. They looked like men playing amongst little boys. Carter gave the Flyers the lead just 47 seconds into the third period. The team never looked back. They went on a tear. Next up it was Mike Richard’s turn to light the lamp. He deflected home a Timonen slapper from the point at 4:59 of the final period. Shortly after the Richards tally Carter put his second goal of the game home. It was on a beautiful feed from Lupul and was all the Flyers would need to win the game. The orange and black continued their relentless attack and Scott Hartnell put the icing on the cake with a soccer style goal that bounced off his chest and in the net to give the Flyers a 5-1 lead. With the game out of hand the fighting started. Arron Asham dropped the gloved after being knocked down by Patrick Kaleta and the two went at it. The fight was furious with punched connecting for both fighters. The majority of Asham’s connected with the face of Kaleta while Kaleta’s only seemed to be finding the helmet of Arron Asham. Despite being outshot in the period 19 to 11 the Flyers had the better of the play. Buffalo eventually added 1 more goal with under 2 minutes in the game but the goal was too little too late. The Flyers face off against the always challenging Washington Crapitals tomorrow night in Philly.

Oh yeah for those of you that missed it, ex-Flyer Donald Brashear got knocked out in a fight last night and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend youtubing that one.

Post Game Quotes:

• “This was a fun hockey game,” said Hartnell. “We had to stick with it for 40 minutes, and we did that. It was a hard fought game. In the third period, we were able to start putting some pucks in the net.”
• “Our leadership is very strong,” said head coach John Stevens. “They do big things and lead the way for us.”
• “It was one of those bad bounces that you see sometimes,” said Biron. “I think we responded well to it. We didn’t let it bother us or get us off our game.”
• “I don’t think I’ve been doing anything all that different lately,” said Carter. “If I have chance to shoot it, I’m going to shoot it. ‘Loops’ made a couple of great passes and I was just able to finish them off.”