By the Numbers: Flyers get 2 points with rare shootout win

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Game Story

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This game was thrown out of any normal rhythm early, as Ryan White threw a late, high hit on Tomas Jurco. This resulted in White getting tossed from the game, and giving the Detroit Red Wings an early five minute power play. The Wings had several shots, but overall it was a strong penalty kill from the Philadelphia Flyers. The Flyers then had a pretty good power play of their own late in the period, but couldn't put one past Petr Mrazek.

The Flyers then started the second period strongly, with back-to-back good shifts from the Claude Giroux line and the Sean Couturier line. Still failing to score, the Red Wings dominated the rest of the period before finally scoring the first goal of the game on a disputed goal by Niklas Kronwall.

The lead was short lived, as Jakub Voracek made a strong move with the puck to set up Claude Giroux, who whipped it in off the post. With the game tied, the Flyers had a golden opportunity to take the lead with a long 5v3 power play, but again Mrazek kept the Flyers off the board. The teams seemed ready to settle for overtime, until the Flyers appeared to have scored in the waning seconds. After review, the referees waved off the goal, and additional gave the Red Wings a power play that would carry over into overtime.

The 3v3 of overtime was uneventful other than the Wings' power play. Miraculously, the Flyers went on to pull this one out with a shootout victory.

Forwards

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In a game where the Philadelphia Flyers only had 17 even-strength shots, no one's stats are going to look very good. In a weak performance on a back-to-back game night, the Giroux line had the strongest game. They supplied most of the scoring chances, as well as the Flyers' only goal. Notably, this line didn't have a single offensive zone faceoff at 5v5 all night.

The Couturier line had an uncharacteristically poor game. They were unable to get in the offensive zone much against either of the Wings top two lines.

The Pierre-Edouard Bellemare line had to be scrambled after White's early ejection. R.J. Umberger, Voracek, and Matt Read all took shifts with Bellemare and Chris VandeVelde. They got killed in Corsi by the Henrik Zetterberg line, but lived to tell about it.

Lastly, Scott Laughton may have been the biggest loser from the White ejection, gaining little ice time. Still it was pretty quiet night for this line, not registering a single shot attempt in approximately three minutes against the Wings' fourth line.

Defense

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Mark Streit had his second consecutive strong game, pulling off an outlier statistically among the Flyers defense, as well as making some threatening plays on offense. Streit and Nick Schultz against the Pavel Datsyuk line was the only positive matchup for the Flyers last night.

Michael Del Zotto and Radko Gudas player their usual big minutes, but to unusually poor results. They had a poor Corsi, and were minus-1.

Evgeny Medvedev and Shayne Gostisbehere didn't fare much better than their teammates, although Ghost always finds a way to make some exciting plays. Medvedev had the least ice time of defensemen, with a few nervy moments.

Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.

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