These three players stood out the most in the Philadelphia Flyers win over the Golden Knights.
Following a 4-1 loss at the hands of the Dallas Stars in their last contest, the Philadelphia Flyers wrapped up their two-game homestand by taking on the Vegas Golden Knights. The Orange and Black were desperate for a win entering this matchup, as they rode a four-game losing streak coming in and certainly weren’t getting an easy opponent in Vegas, who boasted a 6-3-0 record prior to puck drop. Brian Elliott got the nod in-net from Alain Vigneault and opposed Oskar Dansk.
The Flyers played one of their best periods of hockey this season in the first, outshooting the Golden Knights 15-7 and holding a 1-0 lead through the initial 20 minutes. Travis Konecny was the lone player to light the lamp in the frame, netting his ninth point of the season for Philadelphia.
That momentum carried into the middle stanza, as the Flyers absolutely broke the game open, scoring a total of four goals in the second. Michael Raffl, Kevin Hayes, Matt Niskanen, and Oskar Lindblom notched another tally to their names, giving Philadelphia a 5-0 advantage over the Golden Knight after 40 minutes of play.
While the Golden Knights were able to spoil Elliott’s shutout bid, the Flyers still took care of business in the third, winning the game by a score of 6-2. Philadelphia avoided a five-game losing skid with this victory and went 1-1 during this short homestand. There were a whole lot of positives to take away from this meeting, so let’s get right to them and break them down!
I don’t know if you guys know this, but Konecny seems to be really good at this whole hockey thing. The 2015 first-rounder scored the game’s first goal on the power-play, sniping a puck passed Dansk for his fourth tally of the year while displaying quite the celly after the fact. TK was nothing short of dominant in the offensive zone, dictating play on the second line alongside Lindblom and Sean Couturier. Konecny finished the game with two points and tied for the Flyers lead in High Danger Chances For percentage at 5-on-5, showing how effective he was against the Knights.
I’m going to cheat a little here, as one does, and include the whole second power-play unit as my second “player” who shined this evening. The group consisting of Konecny, Lindblom, Couturier, Niskanen, and Ivan Provorov accounted for both of the teams’ power-play goals and could’ve had another with the number of chances they created. They readily outplayed the top unit, which isn’t to say that the first squad was bad because they created a fair amount of chances of their own, just that the second was that impressive on the ice tonight.
And finally, how about Elliott, huh? He was outstanding in his last start against the Calgary Flames and followed that up with another excellent performance in this one. Elliott made 33 saves on 35 shots and hasn’t allowed more than two goals in an outing this season. Philadelphia doesn’t break this game wide open in the second if weren’t for Elliott, who made several point-blank saves on the Knights in the period, and the veteran net-minder deserves just as much credit for this win as the offense does for that reason.
The Flyers are now 3-3-1 on the year! Next game is Thursday on the road against the Chicago Blackhawks.