In Newark, the Philadelphia Flyers’ James van Riemsdyk struck twice on the power-play and the Flyers defeated the New Jersey Devils, 5-3, on Tuesday night.
“You try to use the time that you have in the offseason to prepare yourself the best you can to play, and sometimes you get a little bit of puck luck and stuff like that too, so that’s been good,” van Riemsdyk said. “Obviously, I’m just trying to go out there every game and be consistent from game to game, practice to practice. We have a lot of good players to play with, so that makes it fun.”
Brian Elliott made 23 saves to get the win.
Michael McLeod, Travis Zajac and Pavel Zacha were the Devils’ strikers.
“It [stinks] we couldn’t get the win, but I’m really happy to get that one,” McLeod said. “A lot longer than I wanted, but happy to finally get that one.”
Joel Farabee and Nolan Patrick also scored for the Flyers.
“[Giroux’s] a nice guy to play with, sees the ice so well, makes great plays,” Patrick said. “[Travis Konecny] made a nice play down low, and I had some room in the slot and was trying to find [Giroux], and he had a lot of poise to get it back to me.”
Ivan Provorov added a late empty-net goal to seal the Flyers’ win.
“It was a game of momentum swings, but I thought [Giroux] competed real hard to set the tone,” Philadelphia head coach Alain Vigneault said. “It’s the type of work ethic that we need. We’re not going to be perfect, we’re going to make mistakes, and we’re going to need our goaltenders to cover up for some of those mistakes. But we battled, found a way to get the job done in the third, and for our group that’s a very positive sign.”
Scott Wedgewood made 26 saves in the loss.
“That might be one of the games that could have been two points our way, for sure,” Wedgewood said. “We did a good job bearing down and we didn’t give up on those plays off the post. Our guys were still whacking the stick around the net, but it can go either way. And that’s kind of what the hockey gods wanted for us, I guess.”
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