[Shift Charts] – [Head-to-Head TOI] – [Corsi and Fenwick] – [5-on-5 Faceoffs]
We won’t dance around this one bit. The Flyers won tonight. That was fantastic. They fell behind by a goal, came back, and wound up beating a good Atlanta Thrashers team and a fantastic goalie in Ondrej Pavelec by a convincing score.
That was great. Jody Shelley‘s SNIPE OF A GOAL was a million times better. The Flyers were down 1-0 in the second period and it looked like one of those games where the Flyers offense just wouldn’t get up and they’d lose a close one. But then, Shelley blocked a shot near the blue line, got up and realized he was all alone with the puck in the neutral zone.
If it were any other player, he would’ve been in on a clear breakaway, but Shelley isn’t exactly fast. Just about every other player caught up with him by the time he hit the Thrashers zone, so he decided to blast a shot from the top of the circle. He placed it perfectly above the shoulder of Pavelec, right off the inside corner where the post meets the crossbar.
Tie game. HOLY CRAP DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN.
It did. Kimmo Timonen scored about a tenth of a second later, but he’d take a penalty and the Thrashers would score just three seconds before the end of the period.
Resistance is futile, though, when it comes to the Hartnell-Leino-Briere line. Atlanta successfully quieted them until the midway point of the third period, when Danny Briere picked up a loose puck in front of the crease and threw it by a sprawling, desperate, crying Pavelec.
The orange and black wouldn’t look back (that rhymes). 5-2 win. 61 points. Movin’ on. After the jump, questions with answers and the comment of the night.
Questions with Answers
- Dustin Byfuglien has been really strong on the back-end in Atlanta. Can the Flyers make him look silly like they did for most of the Final a year ago, despite the fact that they don’t have Pronger and he’s playing a different position? He was a minus-2. I’ll take it. And he’s still ugly.
- A few guys on the Thrashers like to drop the gloves. Any fights tonight? No, actually. Kind of surprised by that.
- Can Matt Walker have a better game tonight? I didn’t really notice him, but admittedly I wasn’t watching him too closely.
- Atlanta is good this year, and they beat the Flyers four times last year. Can’t brush them aside anymore. Do the Flyers come out hard against a worthy opponent? I thought the Flyers came out strong in the first, yeah. Pavelec was good though.
- Snow last weekend still has Atlanta crippled. How many fans are in the building tonight? It looked like the movie The Day After Tomorrow in there. Small crowds of people huddled in corners, hiding out from the vicious few inches of snow outside.
Comment of the Night
Brace for the apocalypse, people
>> DragonGirl0593, on Shelley scoring a GOAL
