Carter Hart’s masterful performance helps Flyers shock Hurricanes

Only one team had beaten the Carolina Hurricanes this season. And after Friday now, we can now say they have been beaten a second time. On the back of an outstanding performance from Carter Hart, the Flyers surged late to come out with the 2-1 over Carolina. Zack MacEwen grabbed his first goal with Philadelphia in the win.

Goaltending told the story throughout the night. Both Fredrick Anderson and Hart put on quite the duel as one expected. The two have been sharp early on in the season and haven’t disappointed. Alain Vigneault made a few tweaks to the lineup coming in, swapping Oskar Lindblom and Joel Farabee.

The move paid off as the latter broke a drought that hadn’t seen him score since October 20th, a span of eight games coming in. It was Rasmus Ristolainen who started the play in the defensive zone as he’s played well recently. Scott Laughton made a heads up play in the neutral zone, sending a long pass in that banked off the boards and right to Farabee. He made no mistake going five-hole on Anderson.

While important for Farabee, it was even more important for the Flyers as it tied the game in the early stages of the third period. It was also their first goal in over 128 minutes. Before that, the Hurricanes had largely controlled the pace of play. They took the lead in the second period as Steven Lorentz batted a puck out of midair, his second on the season and first after a seven game drought. It was the only puck that ended up getting past Hart.

Technically Carolina scored a second goal but it was quickly deemed to be offsides after a Philadelphia challenge. It was a fluke play as Seth Jarvis lost his stick on the play as the puck slowly made its way in. But Jarvis was the one who entered the zone before the puck.

With some tweaks to the Flyers power play as well, they had plenty of opportunities to straighten things out. They went 0/5 and didn’t fire many shots towards the net with the man advantage. Their penalty kill was strong, though, as the Hurricanes also went 0/5. Hart had a lot to do with that as Carolina certainly had extreme pressure on most of their opportunities.

It was another statement win for the Flyers and another confident performance from Hart. He stopped 39 of 40 shots in the win.