In Toronto, the Philadelphia Flyers were on the brink in the third period.
The Flyers got a third period goal from Scott Laughton midway through the frame to tie the New York Islanders at 4-4 and force extra time.
It took a second overtime session before Ivan Provorov‘s goal at 15:03 to give the Flyers a 5-4 win and force Game 7 in the series.
“There’s no doubt that this wasn’t one of our better games,” Flyers coach Alain Vigneault said. “But at the end of the day we found a way to get the job done, we found a way to come back in the third and tie up the game against a team that doesn’t give up a lot of leads. [It] took us two overtimes, but we found a way to make a play in the second overtime. Got a great shot and a goal that permits us to have a chance.
“That’s what we wanted. We wanted to have a chance. If someone had asked me at the beginning of this series against such a strong opponent, one game, winner take all, I would have taken that.”
Carter Hart made 49 saves to get the win.
“We’ve had two other games where we’ve won in overtime, so that was the message in locker room: Don’t change anything, just play our game,” Hart said. “That’s what we did. We just needed to funnel pucks to the net, crash hard, and that’s how you score goals, just grinding it out. That’s what it was there at the end.”
Mathew Barzal, Derick Brassard, Matt Martin, and Anders Lee, and scored for the Islanders.
“These moments don’t come around often. Game 7s are special and we’ve got a chance to go to the conference final. Our goal is to win a Cup, so I’m really confident in the group that we have moving forward and I look forward to a big game a couple of days from now.”
Kevin Hayes, James Van Riemsdyk and Michael Raffl also scored for the Flyers.
“Our season’s on the line,” Martin said. “We’ll get out rest here; obviously, a couple of long games that we came up short in. We’ll just get the energy back up, get our rest and find a way to win a big game.
Game 7 is set for Saturday.
[WATCH: All Flyers vs. Islanders highlights]
Semyon Varlamov made 26 saves in the loss.
“It was a tough game; he didn’t get a lot of shots,” Trotz said. “The start wasn’t great, so we’ll see. I thought he made some timely saves though, and those are tougher games to play. When you’re on the other end getting a lot of shots, it’s pretty easy to stay in the game. … I let him battle through it. He’s been a big part of it for us.”
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