Flyers tend to increase blood pressure across the Delaware Valley whenever they play against Islanders.
They did it again on Sunday night, but their fans will just be smiles as they clear the snow to start next week.
The Flyers scored another OT back and forth over the Islanders with a 4-3 decision to win the two game rematch over the weekend. Including last season’s playoffs, when New York eliminated Alain Vigneault’s club in Game 7 of the second round, the Flyers’ last five wins against the Islanders came in overtime. The Flyers beat New York 3-2 in the OT on Saturday.
The Islanders won nine out of 12 clashes with the Flyers last season, including the postseason, regular season and preseason. Flyers are 2 by 2 so far in 2020-21, even though it hasn’t been pretty. It is never really against Barry Trotz’s team.
Kevin Hayes scored the overtime winner and Joel Farabee, 20, scored his first NHL hat-trick.
The Flyers (7-2-1) have won four consecutive games.
The Islanders (3-4-2) have lost five consecutive games.
• Flyers don’t love the way they are playing and that’s a good thing, because they still found a way to start their best season in 10 games (15 points) since the 2002-03 club, which was 7-1- 2 with 16 points after 10 games.
From players to fans, nobody seems very happy with the 7-2-1 start. Imagine being critical of a 7-2-1 start in the past?
The real competing teams win when they are not at their best. And the Flyers haven’t had that kind of beginning since Keith Primeau’s days as a captain.
The Flyers have notoriously started off well in the first month of a season some time ago. This team will be the first to say they haven’t played a full game yet. Despite this, the Flyers did not start slowly in the profit and loss column. This was his best opening month in a season since that same 2002-03 team.
Here’s a look at the records in the opening month of each season between then:
• Farabee can score in a number of ways, but he was well known for his advanced kick in the 2018 draft. In July 2018, former general manager Ron Hextall praised Farabee’s disappointment of the shot.
The sophomore winger showed this in his first two goals and then scored a fat man to complete his hat-trick.
Farabee scored eight goals in 52 regular season games last year as a rookie. He already has five goals this season.
There have been seven hat-tricks in the NHL this season and the Flyers have two of them: Farabee and Travis Konecny.
• The Islanders’ third goal was bad for the Flyers.
Justin Braun failed to keep the puck in the offensive zone and then lost a foot race in the retreat, but Jakub Voracek, Claude Giroux and Robert Hagg were behind on their backchecks. Anders Lee and Mathew Barzal made the team pay, while New York eliminated the 3-1 deficit in the third period in less than six minutes.
The Flyers have had all sorts of problems closing games against the Islanders in the past two seasons. They lost 3-0 in the third period against New York last season at the Wells Fargo Center, en route to a penalty shootout.
Again, the Flyers have not yet assembled a complete game. Flyers will not be perfect, but they can be much cleaner and more consistent for 60 minutes.
• James van Riemsdyk is looking like his vintage style, which makes a difference, a great initial storyline for the Flyers.
He made four assists on Sunday, giving him 13 points from 10 games. It corresponds to the best career start of 10 games in his debut season in 2009-10, when he scored 13 points for the Flyers at the age of 20.
Since he returned to Philadelphia in July 2018, the Flyers are at 45-13-5 when he scores at least one point.
• Both clubs went with their reserve goalkeepers in the second game of the consecutive set.
Brian Elliott is 3-0-0 in three games this season, with 96 saves in 102 shots. It is one of the most reliable backups on the NHL.
With the game tied 3-3, New York goalkeeper Ilya Sorokin made an excellent save over Giroux, with less than three minutes remaining in regulation time. He finished with 25 stops.
• Konecny came back from a game bench and played with good energy. He went without goals and the Flyers still scored four goals.
• Philippe Myers was very effective in both games after a rib fracture.
After playing 23:17 minutes on Saturday, Myers recorded an assist and a score of plus-3 at 23:11 minutes on Sunday.
• The Flyers used a different combination of six saves for their fifth consecutive game, with Hagg joining the team for Erik Gustafsson. Vigneault said the change was not specifically related to the performance of Gustafsson, an offensive-minded guy who has played in the past two wins.
“Not that I think Erik did a good game, but he wanted to put Haggs back,” said Vigneault before the game. “He gives us a great physical defender back there.”
Hagg, who was a healthy scratch in the previous two games, played only 13:42.
• The referees played an interesting game. They scored 10 penalties and some were sticky to both sides.
They also missed a striking check from Casey Cizikas on Oskar Lindblom in the third period.
• Flyers have an opportunity to return when they receive Bruins on Wednesday (8 pm ET / NBCSN) and Friday (7 pm ET / NBCSP).
The Bruins won a set of two Flyers games in Boston, scoring 10 goals, seven of which occurred in the third period.
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