Philadelphia Flyers edge Florida Panthers 3-2 in shootout -NHL Update
Florida Panthers continued to drop in the Eastern Conference rankings as the Philadelphia Flyers edged the once raging team, 3-2, in an elusive shootout decider on Tuesday night, January 24, 2012, at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida, United States.
One of the biggest crowds came out to see the Panthers play but the team did not manage to impress the club failed to score on any single of their three attempts in the shootout to keep the team alive in the contest.
Panthers’ goalie, Scott Clemmensen, was widely outshot, 37-25, in comparison with his counterpart in the Flyers’ net, Sergei Bobrovsky, who made a total of 23 saves while the former fell short on two throughout regulation.
Without a doubt, whatever the situation might be for Florida, they are happy that they will be eventually working towards a playoff spot after many seasons of continuous disappointment.
"We've earned that right to be where we're at", Clemmensen said. "That puts us in a good position coming out of the break for that big playoff push. We expect to make the playoffs, without a doubt".
Flyers had some doubts coming into the match as they were to play without a number of their regular starters and had the rookies take charge instead, which worked out pretty much fine.
"We've got a lot of injuries and missing a lot of key guys but these young guys go out there and do their job and play hard. They want to stay in the line-up", Flyers’ coach, Peter Laviolette, said."It was nice to get a shootout win. There haven't been a
lot of them. It was good to get one, on the road, before the break".
Mikael Samuelsson put Florida ahead with the opening shot of the night on their first power play opportunity but Philadelphia came right back and took the lead with Brayden Schenn and Jakub Voracek put in two goals back-to-back to end the period, 2-1.
Tomas Fleischmann made a crucial game for Florida in the second period to keep his team alive in the match, which ultimately helped force them an overtime extension as both clubs failed to score in the third period.
It was Claude Giroux who scored the one and only shootout goal, giving Philadelphia the much deserved victory.
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