Fifth straight win leaves Voracek a bit grumpy
PHILADELPHIA » Twenty shots allowed in a game? No biggie, Jake Voracek would say, even if the Flyers had only achieved that one other time this season.
Just one penalty taken in Thursday night’s 2-1 victory over the Buffalo Sabres? That’s not exactly new, either. The Flyers only allowed one power play Tuesday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs, too. And they’ve dished out power plays just 10 times over the last six games ... the last five of those not-so coincidental victories.
But all of that doesn’t mean this team is on a roll. Not if you ask Voracek.
“We found a way to win, which is really important,” he said. “You’re not going to play great every night. But I don’t think there was anything by us that was great.”
Well, if it wasn’t great, at the very least Voracek’s pass to tee up Valtteri Filpulla’s game-winning goal in the second period was pretty good. Pretty, pretty good ... enough for a league-leading 31st assist.
That cashed in a point for linemate Michael Raffl, too, who has points in his last five games, mostly with Filppula and Voracek by his side on a new and improved second line.
“It’s very easy to play with Jake because he’s very strong on the puck,” Raffl said. “He makes plays in all three zones and he’s an absolute great playmaker. It makes it easy.”
But Raffl wasn’t going to praise Voracek for his description of the game.
“It was a boring game,” Voracek cracked when asked about limiting what should be a fairly dynamic Sabres offense to 20 shots on goal.
When told Voracek had said that afterward, Raffl could only muster a straight face and an even straighter answer.
“It wasn’t boring, but it was tough for all, for sure,” Raffl said. “It wasn’t fun.”
It also wasn’t classically played, especially in the first period. Raffl would agree with that. But he saw the silver lining in the way it ended.
“We’ve had better games than this, for sure,” Raffl said. “There were a lot of games during that 10-game (losing streak) that we played better than tonight but we still lost. Sometimes it is like that.”
The Flyers went nearly a month between victories, steadily getting worse during an 0-5-5 stretch that finally ended with a 5-2 win in Calgary Dec. 4. But that kicked off what is now a five-game winning streak with this hard-fought if not beautifully executed victory over the Sabres, boosting the Flyers to 13-11-7 (33 points), now just two points shy of the Rangers and Penguins (pending their game in Vegas) in the Metro Division standings.
So that’s not so bad, is it?
“Those are the best wins, I think,” Raffl said of one-goal winning struggles. “You’re pretty happy when you win 4-1 and you play your best game. Then it’s easy to laugh. But that was a war out there, in the last period especially. We came together as a group and Moose was standing on his head and we found a way to win.”
It might be hard for a moose to stand on its head but Brian “Moose” Elliott has been doing it pretty steadily in the Flyers’ crease ... even during that losing streak.
He can see that his teammates’ play has improved in front of him, especially in the way they’ve been disciplined enough to stay out of the penalty box.
“That’s something we had struggled with in that 10-game (losing) stretch,” Elliott said. “We’ve done a good job with checking with our feet and not our sticks, and that’s the (reason) we’re not taking as many penalties.”
That part of their game was again good on this night against a Sabres team that despite having several star-potential offensive players can’t score, and has the 8-18-6 Eastern Conference-worst record to prove it. So cheer up, Jake. “It doesn’t matter,” Voracek said. “We’ve had games where we played great and we lost. We didn’t play very good today but we found a way, which is really important for us. We haven’t done that very often.”