Flyers best Lightning again
Game Events
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Forwards
The Tampa Bay Lightning came out determined not to repeat their performance against the Philadelphia Flyers from earlier this week, making a strong push right off the bat. Steve Mason had to be on top of his game, and kept the Lightning off the board until the Flyers came through with a power play goal. Ultimately, two rare goals from the second power-play unit and a hustle goal by Brayden Schenn was enough for a 3-1 win for the Flyers.
The Lightning's third line with Valtteri Filppula did a pretty good job against the Claude Giroux line. This trio only managed five shots on goal this game, low for them. Still, they scored the game's only 5v5 goal in a shift against the Lightning's fourth line. Schenn was quicker on the puck than anyone else, and has been the Flyers' leading scoring since January 1. Schenn added four hits tonight as well.
The Sean Couturier line had pretty tough duty on Friday night. They did most of the work against the Steven Stamkos line, and didn't see an offensive zone faceoff all night. Nonetheless, Couturier came close to a highlight reel goal in the second period while Sam Gagner added one on the power play.
The Nick Cousins line was buzzing all night. They didn't have much to show for it, but they did push the Lightning into their own zone quite a bit.
The Pierre-Edouard Bellemare line didn't have good possession tonight, but they handled a tough matchup against "The Triplets" for the Lightning all night. Ryan White also deserves a lot of credit for playing a direct hand in both Flyers power play goals by the havoc he created in front of the net.
Defense
The pair of Shayne Gostisbehere and Andrew MacDonald didn't have good numbers, but in their defense, most of that came against the Stamkos line and with defensive zone starts. MacDonald also blocked an extraordinary 10 shots.
Mark Streit and Nick Schultz had a bit better luck in possession, partially because Streit himself had three shots on goal (more than any other forward). The small bubble sizes above say a lot about the deployment of the Flyers defense, even if line matchups were a bit mixed.
Radko Gudas and Brandon Manning put in a lot of work last night. As is often the case, Gudas led the team in shot attempts (seven attempts, five on goal), but his partner Manning out-hit him, 3-2. This pair finished finished the game plus-1 as well.
Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.
