Winless streak ends at 10 as Hayes nets pair

Sometimes it takes more than revenge to motivate an effort.

On Tuesday night, there was some pride involved in the Flyers’ rematch game with the New York Islanders.

After taking it on the chin in a 5-2 drubbing at Elmont, N.Y., the Flyers came back with a bit of anger in their eyes at the Wells Fargo Center a few nights later.

The embarrassment of a lengthy drought had to end at some point and this was as good a game as any. Philadelphia was getting sick of being the butt of jokes around the NHL.

A 3-1 victory ended their 10-game (0-7-3) winless streak, which tied the second-longest in franchise history.

In Saturday night’s game at the Island, the Flyers took a similar 2-1 lead late in

the second period but then got a little tentative with their play and gave up a tying goal. Then three more in the third turned it into a laugher.

On Tuesday night, the Flyers found themselves in the same position but this time they kept the pedal to the metal, outshot the Isles by a 4-0 margin near the end of the period and took that one-goal edge into the second intermission.

And they made it stand up for the rest of the game.

A goal by Kevin Hayes (his second of the game) at 9:45 of the second period broke a 1-1 tie. Hayes scored off a faceoff set-up by Lukas Sedlak. Hayes flipped a shot past goalie Ilya Sorokin.

The Flyers were not happy with the way things ended in the Saturday night game and took out their frustrations in a pair of early fights.

Zack MacEwen got the best of New York’s Matt Martin just seven seconds into the match and then Nic Deslauriers exchanged blows with Ross Johnston just a second later.

New York opened the scoring at 3:12 of the first period during a fiveon-three power play. Noah Dobson sent a shot past goaltender Carter Hart. It was the 17th time in 23 games the Flyers have surrendered the first goal of the game.

The Flyers struck back on a shorthanded goal by Travis Sanheim at 4:37. Sanheim finished off a feed from Noah Cates. It was just the Flyers’ second shorthanded goal of the season.

“Obviously things didn’t end well the other night,’’ Sanheim said during the first intermission. “A lot of things we didn’t like and we had to respond and I thought we did that.’’

With 33.2 seconds to play, Hayes hit an empty net to clinch it.