Game Story
The Philadelphia Flyers started this game out quite well. They outshot the Toronto Maple Leafs 11-1 early, and took the lead on a pretty power play pass from Evgeny Medvedev. The goal seemed to wake up the Leafs, who tied the game only two minutes later with a rare goal from Roman Polak.
The Leafs then had all the momentum, coming all the way back in the shots on goal count.
The second period was more of the same, as the Leafs out-skated the Flyers all over the ice. After the Flyers successfully challenged one potential Leafs goal, former Flyer Joffrey Lupul scored one that counted to give the Leafs a 2-1 lead.
The Flyers had trouble revving up a sputtering offense in the third period, but with seven minutes left Shayne Gostisbehere did it all by himself with a tremendous unassisted goal.
It looked like yet another Flyers game would go to overtime, when the Leafs won a faceoff and Matt Hunwick's one-timer from the point found shockingly found it's way into the net. With only seven seconds remaining, it was too late for the Flyers to answer, who fell by a score of 3-2.
Forwards
It was a pretty even performance from most of the Flyers lines, save for the fourth line. The Claude Giroux line had solid numbers on the night, but didn't have quite as many top notch scoring chances as they've had the previous few games.
The Sean Couturier line may have had the overall strongest game, and they nearly scored the game-winner late when Brayden Schenn ripped a shot off the post.
The Pierre-Edouard Bellemare line's Corsi was okay, although they could have had a better game. They didn't see many minutes against the Leafs Top-6 as they usually do against most opponents, and Bellemare himself took two minor penalties.
The real disaster was the Scott Laughton line. Matt Read earned more ice time than his linemates and scored a power-play goal, but there was almost nothing positive for this group otherwise. Their Corsi was atrocious, and they were on the ice for each of the Leafs first two goals. It'll be hard to keep Jordan Weal out of the lineup now.
Defense
The Flyers distributed ice time amongst the defense much more evenly against the Leafs than usual. Mark Streit and Nick Schultz had perhaps the best night of all the pairs, playing against Nazem Kadri and the Leafs top line. Schultz in particular seemed to be more of a factor in the offensive zone than usual, earning one of his better single game Corsi stats of the season.
Michael Del Zotto and Radko Gudas had one of their weaker nights. They performed poorly against the Tyler Bozak line, had an overall low Corsi by their standards, and perhaps didn't see their usual ice time as a result.
Medvedev and Gostisbehere had mixed results in terms of Corsi and were on the ice for two goals against. Each player played a key role in both Flyers goals, however, making it an eventful night for this pair.
Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.
