In Raleigh, Carter Hart made 31 saves in a 3-1 win for the visiting Philadelphia Flyers over the Hurricanes on Wednesday night.
“No expectations, just come in and play hockey,” Hart said. “I do all the work in preparation, two weeks away. I’ve got time to focus on some other parts of my game and my body. I used the time away effectively and just prepared for the next puck I had to stop.”
The Flyers broke out to a 2-0 lead in the opening stanza on goals from Owen Tippett and Travis Konecny.
Philadelphia improved to 8-7-1.
“We knew they wanted to play a fast game and create turnovers and get in behind us,” Konecny said. “As long as we just frustrated them by chipping pucks in, chipping pucks out and sticking to our game plan, when we got our chances we were going to bear down and hope for the best.”
Tippett scored at 1:50 of the first to stake the Flyers to a 1-0 lead.
“You can’t sit back at all, otherwise it doesn’t end too well,” Tippett said. “Right from the start, we had a great game and we kept it going for 60 minutes.”
Konecny made it 2-0 with 58 seconds left in the frame.
“I’m just trying to work hard and get my game back, and my linemates are a big part of everything,” Konecny said. “I’m just trying to get to good spots. On that one, I didn’t do anything. ‘Seels’ just made an unbelievable play and I just deflected it.”
Carolina dropped to 9-7-0.
“It’s frustrating but it’s got to stop,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “And that’s going to be on me pretty soon to start shaking things up if we continue to do that because we are too good to be inconsistent.”
Hart missed five games with a back injury before returning for the Flyer on Wednesday.
“That’s when I thought he was at best, the first period,” Philadelphia coach John Tortorella said. “He had some great saves. He’s played well all year long. To let us get going, I thought that was his best period.”
The Flyers pushed the lead to 3-0 with 29 seconds of fresh ice used in the third period on a marker from Ryan Poehling.
“I thought the most important part of the game was the second period when they scored a goal,” Tortorella said. “The building gets revved up, we take two penalties, have to kill the penalties, and we get out of the second period, 3-1. Not 3-2 or 3-3. I thought we held our composure, handled the momentum swing and ended up starting the third period 3-1.”
Stefan Noesen was the lone striker for the Canes, his goal came with nine minutes left in the third period for the 3-1 final.
Pyotr Kochetkov made 20 saves in the loss.
“As a group, it doesn’t look like we’ve consistently bought into how we want to do things,” Carolina’s Jordan Staal said. “And it’s going to look like that, it’s going to be a .500 club that wins some games, loses some games, just kind of ho-humming. It’s certainly a little frustrating, and we’re going to need to have everyone.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.