Say this for the Flyers, they refuse to lose.
For the sixth time this season, the Flyers rallied from a deficit to gain at least a point on Saturday night and were rewarded with a 6-5 shootout win over the Blues at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis.
The Flyers improved their shootout record to 4-0.
Down 5-3 early in the third period, the Flyers rallied on the second of two goals by Christian Dvorak at 7:53 and one by Owen Tippett at 10:29 to end a 10-game drought.
Then the Flyers won it in the shootout on a goal from Trevor Zegras, who also scored a pair of goals in regulation time.
Zegras was all over the place. He was even awarded a penalty shot in overtime but that attempt came up short.
Flyers goaltender Samuel Ersson didn’t get much help from his defense but somehow kept his team in it down to the end. He raised his career record in shootouts to 11-3. Including last season, the Flyers have won their last seven shootout decisions. Ersson stopped all three St. Louis shots in the shootout.
There are nights when Zegras makes the occasional mistake but then makes up for it by making opponents commit some errors of their own.
That was the case when Zegras turned over a puck leading to the Blues’ first goal, but then he struck back with a pair of scores of his own.
Zegras’ second goal started with him setting up in front of the St. Louis net and ended with the deflection of an Emil Andrae shot.
Coming back in these games seems to be a combination of starting out slow but never giving up.
“The slow start, I feel like we’ve been doing that a lot recently,” Zegras said after the game. “If we can eliminate that from our game, I think we would be a much better squad. Those first couple (Blues’) goals were on me but it’s nice to have the boys rally.”
It was another one of those gritty comebacks, the kind coach Rick Tocchet appreciates.
“Stickin’ with it, that’s all you can do,” the coach said. “We were struggling early and then the ‘Devo’ (Christian Dvorak) line got us back in the game.”
That unit finished with 10 points. Tippett had a goal and three assists to tie a career-high four points. Zegras and Dvorak had three points each.
“They’re connected, holding on to pucks,” Tocchet said of the Dvorak line. “They’re confusing and when they play like that, they’re hard to defend against. We limited them to 17 shots. And ‘Ers’ hung in there, credit him for sticking with it.”
St. Louis led 2-1 after the first period and made the advantage 3-1 at 6:54 of the second on a goal by Justin Faulk. But the Flyers responded just 19 seconds later when Dvorak converted a Tippett feed.
Dvorak sounded upbeat in a televised second-period interview.
“Good response for us,” he said. “We definitely needed to work on that first period. We don’t quit. We had a good period there.”
This was the annual fathers’ road trip and they couldn’t have been too pleased with what they saw in the first period.
The Flyers surrendered a pair of goals in the first period, the first time they have allowed more than a goal in the opening 20 minutes all season.
Both St. Louis tallies were the results of Flyers turnovers.
The first came just 1:19 into the game when Zegras gave up the puck at center ice. Seconds later, Jordan Kyrou sent a right circle shot inside the far post.
Zegras made up for that gaffe with a goal of his own at 8:18. He took a drop pass from Dvorak, rushed in and slid the puck between goaltender Jordan Binnington’s pads.
In a first intermission televised interview, Zegras took full responsibility for the first St. Louis goal.
“That first one was big time on me,” Zegras admitted. “That’s a big time no-no against a team like this – early in the game, on the road with the dads in attendance.”
What was the plan for the second period?
“Limit the turnovers, myself included,” Zegras said. “Get in behind them and play below their goal line.”
The tie didn’t last long. Travis Konecny tried to make a pass back to the point but there was no one home. Robert Thomas stepped in, raced into the Flyer zone, pulled up and spotted Jimmy Snuggerud racing down the middle. Ersson was left out to dry on the goal at 9:42.
>Short shots
The Flyers finish off a back-to-back with a Saturday night game in Dallas, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time. . .Philadelphia started the game ranked second in the NHL in penalty killing at 88.7 percent. . .Matvei Michkov’s three-game scoring streak ended. . .Andrae had two assists for his first NHL career multi-point game. . .Zegras is 0-for-2 on penalty shots for his career.
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