Philadelphia v Pittsburgh 6-5 - It was a 2012 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals
replay for the Pittsburgh
Penguins and Philadelphia
Flyers on Wednesday night. Just like their Stanley Cup Playoff
series in April, the Atlantic Division rivals played up-and-down
hockey. They again combined to score lots of goals. They again played
with excessive emotion and obvious disdain for each other. And they
again proved that no Penguins lead is safe against the Flyers. Jakub
Voracek finished off a hat trick with 1:31 left in regulation to
lift Philadelphia to a wild 6-5 victory over Pittsburgh. It marked
the fifth time, counting playoffs, since March 18 of last season the
Flyers erased a two-goal deficit to beat the rival Penguins. On four
of those occasions, Pittsburgh had a lead of at least 2-0 during the
first period, including Games 1 and 2 of the postseason in April.
Voracek's third goal came when he fended off Pittsburgh defenseman
Brooks Orpik
behind the net to the left of Tomas
Vokoun, then banked the puck into the net off the goaltender. The
goal, Voracek's sixth of the season, came 32 seconds after Brandon
Sutter capped Pittsburgh's two-goal rally to tie the game after
Philadelphia had erased an earlier 2-0 deficit. Voracek's first two
goals came 28 seconds apart, on each side of the second intermission.
They followed goals by Niklas Grossmann and Simmonds in a stretch of
four unanswered by Philadelphia, which has won two consecutive to
salvage a split of a season-long six-game road trip. Claude
Giroux had two assists for the Flyers, who were coming off a 7-0
win at the New York Islanders on Monday. Philadelphia improved to 6-1
at Consol Energy Center. The Penguins' only regular-season win
against the Flyers here was April 7, 2012, the meaningless
regular-season finale when the teams were locked into their Stanley
Cup Playoff seeds. Four days after that, the Penguins held a 3-0 lead
after one period of the first-round series but ended up losing, 4-3,
on Voracek's overtime goal. Two days later, Pittsburgh scored the
first two goals in Game 2, but again, Philadelphia rallied to win
8-5 and would eventually take the best-of-7 series, 4-2. A similar
script played out Wednesday when Pittsburgh lost for the fourth time
in seven home games this season. The Penguins, who are 8-2-0 on the
road, began a stretch of three home games in five days. Holding a 5-3
lead with nine minutes to play, the Flyers limited the Penguins to a
James Neal
goal over a span of 2:29 of 5-on-3 time after penalties were called
on Mike
Knuble, Ruslan
Fedotenko and Max Talbot. Pittsburgh played with at least one
extra man for 4:16 in an attempt to tie the game but was limited to
the one goal. Chris
Kunitz appeared to have tied it with 5:39 left but video review
ruled he kicked the puck into the net. Pittsburgh's 261st consecutive
sellout crowd booed when that was announced, but it became moot when
Sutter tied it on a wraparound goal with 2:03 to play. Voracek closed
out the scoring in an end-to-end game reminiscent of the playoff
series last spring in which 56 goals were scored in six games.
Philadelphia trailed 2-0 7:15 into the game on goals by Matt
Niskanen and Evgeni
Malkin, but the Flyers evened it by the end of the first period.
The Flyers took their first lead when Voracek scored a power-play
goal in the closing moments of the second. He pounced on a loose puck
low in the right circle and flipped it past Vokoun for his first in
six games. Philadelphia was badly outplayed in the opening minutes,
with Niskanen scoring his second of the season with a shot from the
point through traffic at 5:07 and Malkin adding a power-play goal
2:08 later when he collected a deflection off the end boards and
quickly flipped it into the net past Flyers goalie Ilya
Bryzgalov. Malkin's tally marked the ninth consecutive game in
which Pittsburgh recorded a power-play goal. But the Flyers tied the
game with two goals in the span of a minute, beginning their comeback
with a wild goal at 11:49. With several players in the crease or its
immediate area, and Vokoun well out of the net, Philadelphia took at
least four shots before Grossmann buried his first of the season.
Penguins defenseman Kris
Letang blocked at least two tries on the goal line. The goal was
the fourth in 373 career games for Grossmann, his first since Jan.
21, 2011. Simmonds scored for the third time in his past six contests
60 seconds later. Danny
Briere earned an assist, giving him five points in his past three
games. After Voracek's first two goals put Philadelphia up by a pair,
Tyler Kennedy
cut the Flyers' lead to 4-3 with his second of the season 5:29 into
the third. But Simmonds restored the two-goal advantage when his
attempted setup for Giroux hit Niskanen's stick and went past Vokoun
2:07 later. Philadelphia lost its season goals leader, Matt
Read, to an upper-body injury. He did not play after the first
intermission, and general manager Paul Holmgren said Read, who has
seven goals, will be re-evaluated Thursday.
St Louis v Colorado 0-1 - David
Jones has scored plenty of goals in his brief NHL career, perhaps
none more significant than the one he delivered Wednesday night. His
goal with 16.4 seconds remaining in overtime gave the Colorado
Avalanche a 1-0 victory against the St.
Louis Blues at the Pepsi Center and ended a personal slump that
had reached 10 games. Jones took a pass from Matt
Hunwick and whipped the puck through a screen and past goalie
Jaroslav
Halak's glove for his second goal of the season. It was his only
shot on goal. Goalie Semyon
Varlamov made 33 saves for his second shutout of the season, his
sixth as a member of the Avalanche, and the 10th of his NHL career.
The Avalanche swept a two-game homestand and have gone 3-1-1 in the
past five games to climb back to .500 with a 7-7-1 record. The teams
headed into the overtime in a scoreless tie mainly because of
Varlamov, who has become accustomed to facing plenty of shots.
Varlamov made a career-high 50 saves, one short of the Avalanche
record set by Patrick Roy in 1997, in a 6-4 loss at Edmonton on
Saturday, then stopped 33 shots Monday in Colorado's 6-5 win against
Nashville. Jones' ability to regain his scoring touch would be
another positive sign. He's scored 20 or more goals in each of the
past two seasons. The Blues hardly looked like a team that played
Tuesday night in St. Louis, where they dropped a 2-1 decision to San
Jose, and were playing their third game in four nights and their
fifth (fourth on the road) in a stretch of eight days. St. Louis
outshot the Avalanche in every period but the overtime and enjoyed a
33-20 advantage in shots for the game. Halak played for the first
time since he suffered a groin injury in a Feb. 1 game against
Detroit. He wasn't tested often but made a tough save against Matt
Duchene at the 12-minute mark of the third period and he stopped
Paul Stastny
on a 2-on-1 rush with 1:40 left in overtime. The defeat was just the
third in nine road games for the Blues, who have lost seven
consecutive games at the Pepsi Center. Avalanche right wing Milan
Hejduk suffered a torso injury early in the second period and
didn't return.
Los Angeles v Calgary 3-1 - The Los
Angeles Kings looked like anything but a team playing its second
game in as many nights with a backup goaltender between the pipes.
Just 24 hours after dispatching the Oilers 3-1 in Edmonton, Jonathan
Bernier and the Kings swept Alberta by beating the Calgary
Flames 3-1 at Scotiabank Saddledome on Wednesday night. Bernier,
making just his third start of the season, stopped 26 shots while
Jeff Carter
scored his team-leading eighth goal of the season as part of a
two-point night to give the Kings (7-6-2) back-to-back wins for the
third time this season. The Kings have played 11 of 15 games on the
road, but are home for eight of their next nine. The Kings showed
little sign of fatigue out of the gate. They pumped six shots on
Calgary goaltender Joey
MacDonald in the first five minutes, then found the back of the
net on their seventh. Kopitar circled the net, popped out the other
side and found Dustin
Brown alone in the slot. Brown rifled the puck over MacDonald's
blocker to make it 1-0 just 6:15 into the game. The goal woke Calgary
up, at least temporarily. Swarming the crease with Bernier sprawling,
Michael
Cammalleri couldn't get the puck in the air enough to put it over
the arm of the Kings' goaltender with 7:19 remaining in the period.
But the Flames made good on their next scoring chance. Jarome
Iginla fended off Jarret
Stoll behind the net and fed the puck to TJ
Brodie in the high slot. Brodie had time to skate in from the
point and rip a low shot that beat Bernier to the blocker side at
14:51 to tie the game 1-1. The tie lasted just 29 seconds. Trevor
Lewis corralled Carter's rebound and put the puck under the
crossbar for his first of the season to make it 2-1 heading into the
first intermission. Neither team scored in the second period, but not
for a lack of effort from the Kings. With Chris
Butler serving a holding penalty midway through the period,
MacDonald made three of his 12 second period saves during the Kings'
power play. He made his best stop with 4:21 remaining, turning aside
Kopitar on the doorstep after a feed from Brown to send the game into
the third period 2-1. After the Kings killed off an early tripping
penalty to Justin
Williams, Carter and the Kings put the game away at 9:27 of the
final period. Mike
Richards spotted Carter in the slot, and Carter, who scored the
game-winner in Edmonton, beat MacDonald to give L.A. a two-goal lead.
The Kings forced MacDonald to be sharp before Bernier turned away the
Flames on a chance to get back into the game with seven minutes
remaining, robbing Cammalleri point-blank in the slot after a pass
from behind the net. Bernier also stopped late power-play shots by
Iginla and Jay
Bouwmeester. The saves were two of 12 made by Bernier over the
final 20 minutes of the game.
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