Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good – so long as you don't make it a habit. But after three straight games of it – including Tuesday night against the Blue Jackets - it's certainly turned into one.
Brayden Schenn's goal with 56 seconds left on a deflection just barely made it over the line. It took a review, but eventually, the goal counted and got the Flyers another point.
Four points in three games is a step in the right direction. But until the third, the Flyers were heavily out-played by a team below them in the standings.
A point was left on the ice in Columbus. The Flyers knew that. What they also knew was that they were lucky to get any points at all.
"It's satisfying but it's a lucky point too," Schenn said. "We were lucky to squeeze into overtime."
Schenn's second goal of the game came in the final minute of the third. Until then, the Flyers tried to recover from a horrible second period and third period where two penalties threatened momentum.
Ultimately, the Flyers turned in a similar effort as they had all road trip, an effort barely good enough to salvage a point.
"It's great that we got it. I don't think anybody was happy with the effort," Steve Mason said. "I think we looked sluggish out there. Until the last little bit, we weren't generating enough offense. We have to shoot more. We'll take this one point, but we have to have a better effort all around."
The Flyers took just 21 shots on Sergei Bobrovsky, and many of them didn't test the reigning Vezina Trophy winner. In overtime, the Flyers had a dominant shift of puck possession, but managed only one shot when more were there for the taking.
At the close of the shift, with tired players on the ice, Columbus took the puck the other way on a 2-on-1 and scored.
"The way we played in the second period, we didn't deserve it," head coach Craig Berube said. "They came out hard, they always do in their rink, and the second period wasn't very good. The third period we pushed and played a lot better, tied it up and got a point."
The team with just one win in 10 games closed the road trip the way it started, with a sub-par effort and minimal reward. A 1-2-2 road trip wasn't satisfying.
"You put yourself in position to get the second one and you don't come up with it," Mason said. "In overtime, you make a mistake, they put it in the back of the net. They gain a point and it puts them closer to us. Those are points that we need."
"We got some points, obviously we need those, but we just have to be better in general," Schenn said. "That was a big game out there for us tonight. We did get a point, but at the end of the day, we'd like to have a better road trip than that."
And what did Berube think of the road trip.
"It's average. I think we gave some points away," Berube said. "Tonight, [we played] half a game. We gave points away."
Berube was asked about his recent decisions for healthy scratches. The coach didn't attribute the results to who was scratched and who played. For Berube, it comes down to effort.
"It has to do with five guys giving the right effort on the ice all at once," Berube said, "playing the game the right way all the time, for 60 minutes."
The Flyers now return home, where they will face opponents like Columbus. The New Jersey Devils, Thursday's opponent, sit four points above the Flyers in the standings. The Carolina Hurricanes, Saturday's opponent, are one of the few teams below the Flyers in the standings.
"We could do a lot better," Claude Giroux said of the road trip. "Obviously we had a couple points but we're a better team than that."
This is the time for the Flyers to show that, or the ongoing discussion about high draft picks and blockbuster trades will continue. But as Giroux noted, it starts with changing the outcome of games like Tuesday night's.
"Good teams find a way to win those kind of games," Giroux said. "I think we did a lot of good things to make sure we tied it up. We kinda let a point get away here. We have to find a way to get those extra points."
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
