PHILADELPHIA – The Flyers got a solid performance from Steve Mason who made 36 saves in a 2-0 shutout of the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday.
Steve Mason had 36 saves in win over Canucks – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Mason has struggled this season but his effort in the win was solid enough to make a difference.
“You come to the rink and you work hard and you try to put on a happy face,” Mason said. “But personally you’re not happy with the situation you’re in but that’s the role you accept. The thing you control is how hard you work in practice to prepare and that’s what I focused on. There’s built up, not necessarily anger but frustration and that’s what you use as your motivation in practice to keep going to make sure you’re ready for when your next shot is.”
Michael Raffl and Sean Couturier supported the offense with goals in the first and third periods, respectively.
“[Mason] played unreal tonight, made some key saves at key moments,” Couturier said. “Kept us in the game all game. They outshot us a little bit. But he made the big saves at the right time and played great.”
The Canucks lost the game and Henrik Sedin to a lower-body injury early in the second period.
“That’s law of averages,” Vancouver’s Alexandre Burrows said. “You have to believe that those ones that are staying out right now are going to come in bunches later on.
“You just keep believing that what you’re doing is the right thing. There’s mistakes, things you can learn from. We feel that we can get a lot greasier around the net, can keep it a little more simple. Get pucks on net, traffic, tips, rebounds and that’s how you score in this League. Those cross-ice and one-timers and nice toe drags, they sometimes work on this level but in this League you have to be a real special player to make that work.”
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