With season in peril, leadership prevailed
The most startling, challenging, frightening nine minutes of his NHL career where finally over Wednesday, and all Carter Hart knew was that the Flyers were still where they could be at their best.
The New York Islanders had just rallied from a three-goal deficit to force overtime and they hardly would be bashful in their celebration. But the Flyers had not lost consecutive games since Jan. 7, and would be in no mood to do so in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup quarterfinals.
So, they would return to their locker room, grateful for the opportunity to preserve that record. That’s when Hart, 22, knew exactly where to look for inspiration.
“There’s a lot of good vets in our room,” Hart said. “There is especially one guy in there who has won a Cup before. Nisky.”
Matt Niskanen, 33, is the first-year Flyers defenseman who won a Cup with the 2018 Washington Capitals, coached by Barry Trotz, who has come to coach the Islanders. With Kevin
Hayes, Niskanen has personified the value of the Flyers’ trust in general manager Chuck Fletcher and coach Alain Vigneault to recognize a special kind of hockey talent. In other circumstances, after a young goaltender was solved in the final minutes of a turning-point playoff game, a team could have sagged.
But the Flyers would have none of that, needing only 2:40 of overtime to win, 4-3, on Philippe Myers’ bouncy goal. The Flyers would have none of that because Niskanen would have none of that, and because Hayes would have none of that, and because Vigneault would have none of that.
“Nisky plays the game so hard,” said Hart, who has had the most uncluttered of views. “And he plays with an edge. He is such a solid defender.”
So as his heart settled, and as the Flyers exhaled, and as the room quieted for a moment, Hart looked toward Niskanen.
“Before the game, he said, ‘We’re a team that always bounces back when a game is not up to our par,’” the goaltender recalled.
“He is so good in the locker room. And we have a lot of vets, G (Claude Giroux) and Jake (Voracek) and Coots (Sean Couturier). That’s a good leadership group. They know when to say the right things.”
They should not have had to say much, the value of the game so plain. Had the Flyers dropped the first two games of the series after wasting a 3-0 first-period lead Wednesday, the Islanders may have had enough momentum to roll through the series and deep into the next one. But Hart survived a late New York power play, the penalty for Vigneault demanding a video review of a possible off-side infraction on the goal Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored with 2:09 left in regulation.
And that gave the Flyers that moment to appreciate that they had not yet been beaten.
“I told the players that the (first-round) Montreal series might have been my first one where there were no overtimes,” Vigneault said. “In playoff hockey, there normally is. So you’ve got to find a way to get it done.”
Surely, there were some squiggly lines drawn on a white board before the overtime, the coaching staff required to show some hockey sophistication. But that was basically the message: Find a way. That, the Flyers did when Couturier took one shot, then another, then gathered the puck and shipped it the Myers at the right point. Myers took a shot that hit a stick, took a bounce and soared over the waving glove of the Isles’ second goaltender of the day, Thomas Greiss. Double doink.
With that, the Flyers would prove the same thing at the end of the game that they did at its beginning, which is that they were unwilling to give the Islanders any momentum. After Game 1, a 4-0 loss, the Flyers could have been everything from stunned to bubbled-out. Another performance like that and they could have high-tailed it to Sea Isle City to cram in a week of one of those summer-caravan publicity tours they so enjoy.
Instead, they blasted the Islanders, winning every early shift, using two goals from Hayes and one from Couturier to help make sure they would never be behind in the game.
“Game 2 is always pretty important,” Hayes said.
“But tonight was probably our most important game of the season. And we responded.”
Then, they responded again.
“It’s huge,” Hayes said. “We’re feeling pretty good about ourselves.”
The Flyers won on a day when Hart made just enough difficult saves to keep the Islanders thinking. They found a way, as Vigneault recommended.
“We know we have another level to our game, and we had to bring it,” Couturier said. “Tonight was a step forward.”
It could have been a tragic step backward. But in those tense minutes between regulation and overtime, the Flyers dismissed the concept and played like a team determined to win a series, if not more. Game 3 is Thursday night at 7.
“Obviously, we can’t get too high or too low,” Myers said. “We’re going to get ready for the next game like we always do. We’re going to forget about this one. But I think it definitely gives us a mental edge.”
The Flyers’ mental toughness, which allowed them to roll through the seeding portion of the postseason to earn the No. 1 seed in the East, was challenged Wednesday.
Then, Carter Hart looked around the room, understood who he was surrounded by, and likely saved a season.