This afternoon game between the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers started pretty evenly. Halfway through the first, however, Nick Schultz absorbed a very hard hit and was forced to leave the game. This hit set the table for the rest of the game.

After Luke Schenn started a fight to stand up for Schultz, the Flyers found themselves without two of their heavily rotated top-four defensemen for an extended period. The Rangers carried the play thereafter, but the Flyers weathered the storm.

Eventually the Flyers found their footing, and when the Couturier line finally got the goal they have been deserving, the game looked very different. Ultimately the Flyers can credit their depth, both in forward scoring and defensemen adjusting on the fly to bigger roles, with ending their 10 game losing streak at Madison Square Garden.

Game Flow

Goals:

1 – 0. Simmonds (Read, Del Zotto). PHI on-ice: 14, 17, 24, 15, 22

2 – 0. Couturier (Simmonds, Laughton). PHI on-ice: 14, 17, 24, 53, 82

3 – 0. Empty net, Simmonds (unassisted). PHI on-ice: 17, 76, 78, 3, 15

Forwards

The heroes of the day were Couturier and his linemates. They led the team in ice-time, consistently created chances, and supplied all three goals. They have been deserving of this kind of result for some time.

For the Bellemare and Giroux lines, it was a similar story to recent games. The Giroux line did okay while taking on the best competition the Rangers had to offer, but was held off the scoresheet. The Bellemare line was meanwhile mediocre, again.

It is also noteworthy that the fourth line with Laughton played a few more minutes than usual. This was not necessitated by any injury, but was purely a coach's decision. The increased minutes did not change their possession percentages in any meaningful way.

Defense

The big story on defense was Evgeny Medvedev stepping up to play huge minutes. With Schultz missing nearly the entire game, and Schenn landing 17 penalty minutes in the same sequence, the Flyers were forced fill a lot of ice time. Medvedev plugged almost that entire burden.

Medvedev would go on to play significant minutes with every defensemen other than Del Zotto, and lead the team in 5v5 ice time. This was by far the toughest minutes he's seen this season, and even included some penalty kill time. Medvedev handled all these tests swimmingly, earning a nice possession rating, four shots, and a plus one rating. That's quite a change from being a scratch most of this month.

Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.