The Philadelphia Flyers will look for their 10th win in 13 games when they host the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday night.
The Flyers posted a hard-earned, 2-1 road victory against the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday thanks in large part to 30 saves from goaltender Carter Hart.
Philadelphia also played gritty defense and blocked 31 shots, eight from Ivan Provorov. More than once, Provorov went sprawling to the ice to block a shot.
Scott Laughton and Noah Cates each scored one goal, and Hart preserved the victory with a scintillating pad save in the final few seconds against Lucas Raymond.
“Guys were sacrificing,” Laughton said. “We talked about that before the game. We battled the whole night and got it done.”
The Flyers had their momentum interrupted with a 4-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday.
Even though it took until the third period to score both goals, the Flyers responded in a big way. As they’ve worked their way back into playoff contention, bad losses haven’t lingered.
“We’ve got a big game (Sunday),” Laughton said. “There’s a lot of hockey left to be played. We’re gonna try to get on a roll before the break.”
Sunday’s matchup against the Jets will be the ninth back-to-back situation for the Flyers this season. It’s not easy, but this is reality in the National Hockey League.
For every team.
“That’s the kind of hockey we have to play,” Cates said. “We have to bring this type of energy every night. We got away from it against Chicago. We have to come out with this type of energy every night.”
The Jets will look for their second win in as many nights when they battle the Flyers.
Winnipeg defeated the Ottawa Senators 5-1 on Saturday.
Mark Scheifele scored two goals while Nikolaj Ehlers, Blake Wheeler and Cole Perfetti each added one goal as the Jets won their 30th game of the season. Ehlers had missed 36 games with an abdominal injury but has four goals and nine assists in nine games back.
Goaltender Connor Hellebuyck also was solid with 25 saves.
After consecutive 4-1 losses on the road to the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs, this was the type of performance the Jets needed.
“We challenged the team this morning,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “We needed a little bit more out of them. I thought they responded well.”
Scheifele, who scored his team-leading 28th goal this season, said the recipe for success was simple.
“We stuck to our gameplan,” he said. “It was big.”
The plan was to score some goals, play stingy defense and get solid goaltending. Unlike the past two games when the Jets were outscored 8-2, this was more like the team that had been successful for large portions of the season.
“We had a great (penalty kill) and a lot of shots blocked,” Scheifele said. “It showed a lot of character with guys blocking shots and putting their bodies on the line.”
–Field Level Media