Flyers top Rangers to win 5th straight
Claude Giroux scored twice and Carter Hart stopped 26 shots to lead the Philadelphia Flyers to their fifth straight win, 5-2 over the New York Rangers on Friday night.
The Flyers have been sensational of late as they surge up the Eastern Conference standings. They are an impressive 23-5-4 at home and Hart has been about flawless at the Wells Fargo Center. He improved to 182-2 at home this season; 14-1 over his last 15 starts, and was dominant against the Rangers after he allowed a quirky goal early in the game.
The Flyers were revitalized by first-year coach Alain Vigneault, who coached the Rangers for five seasons and led them to the 2014 Stanley Cup Final, and suddenly seem like a team ready to make some noise in the playoffs. The Flyers missed the postseason last season and haven’t been to the second round since 2012. Hart gives them a chance every night and the Flyers get production from every line.
Sean Couturier, James van Riemsdyk and Kevin Hayes also scored to help the Flyers beat the Rangers for the eighth time in the last nine games of the series.
The Rangers’ playoff push suffered a blow when forward Chris Kreider suffered a fractured foot in the first period. He appeared to get hurt when he blocked a shot by Phillipe Myers and could miss significant time. The 28-year-old Kreider just signed a seven-year contract extension reportedly worth $45 million on Monday. Kreider has 24 goals and 21 assists for 45 points in 63 games this season. Kreider was a 2009 first-round draft pick and has played his entire career with New York.
The Rangers came into the game with a franchiserecord nine straight road wins, and nine wins in their last 10 overall. They trail Columbus — which lost 5-0 to Minnesota — by two points for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference. Without Kreider, the road to the postseason just got bumpier for the Rangers.
Avalanche 3, Hurricanes 2 — Samuel Girard scored a tiebreaking goal with 2:37 left in the third period and Tyson Jost scored twice as the Avalanche extended their winning streak to five games.
Girard took a cross-ice pass from Gabriel Landeskog and lifted a shot high into the net to break a 2-2 tie. The Avalanche won after allowing Carolina to rally from a 2-0 deficit.
Pavel Francouz stopped 45 shots and won his fifth consecutive start.
Jost broke a 36-game scoring drought with his sixth and seventh goals of the season as Colorado won its seventh consecutive road game, matching the longest road winning streak in franchise history.
Carolina got two goals from Teuvo Teravainen in the third period to tie the score, but fell for the second straight game to a top team from the Western Conference. The Hurricanes, in a tight competition for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, lost 4-1 at home to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday.
Wild 5, Blue Jackets 0 — Alex Stalock stopped 24 shots for his fourth shutout of the season and the Minnesota Wild beat the Columbus Blue Jackets for the second time this week, 5-0 on Friday night.
Zach Parise and Kevin Fiala each had a goal and an assist to help the Wild win their third straight and improve to 12-5-1 in their past 18. They moved within a point of a wild-card slot in the crowded Western Division.
Twenty-four hours after a 7-1 rout of Detroit in the first leg of the back-to-back, the Wild also got goals from Joel Eriksson Ek, Jared Spurgeon and Ryan Hartman. Stalock had his ninth career shutout.
The injury-plagued Blue Jackets are slipping in the other direction. They lost for the 10th time in 11 games (1-5-5), but still started the day holding the second wildcard spot in the Eastern Division.
Joonas Korpisalo looked shaky in his first start in the net since returning from a Dec. 29 knee injury.