Hanging their hats on a stellar defensive performance at the end of the night, the Philadelphia Flyers held on to knock off the Boston Bruins, 2-0, at TD Garden on Tuesday night, vaulting themselves out of last place in the Metropolitan Division and earning their third win of the season.
Goals from Tyson Foerster (2) and Joel Farabee (ENG, 2) lifted Philadelphia to victory, but the story of this Flyers game was the performance from the defense, again, and the strong goaltending from Sam Ersson.
In short, it was not a Flyers game like we have seen before this season. And it was effectively the opposite of the 12-goal thrilled against Minnesota on Saturday.
Sam Ersson: A
Ersson stopped a whopping 3.23 goals above expected on Tuesday night, per Moneypuck, which is a marked improvement on his early-season performances.
Coming into this game, Ersson carried a mark of -6.1 goals saved above expected, which was the third-worst mark in the league (68th out of 70), ahead of only Connor Ingram (-7.3) and Alexandar Georgiev (-10.2).
By the end of the night, the 25-year-old Swede finished with 24 saves on 24 shots, giving the Flyers their first shutout victory of the year.
And the way things were trending between Ersson and Ivan Fedotov, those might be words nobody was expecting to hear this season.
With his shutout, Ersson became the third Flyers goalie to ever record a shutout in Boston (Antero Niittymaki, Jan. 2, 2006, and Brian Boucher, March 4, 2000), and also gave the Flyers their first regulation win in Boston since Oct. 6, 2011 – Sean Couturier’s NHL debut.
Emil Andrae: B
What a surprise Emil Andrae has been, huh?
Replacing Cam York is an unenviable task, as head coach John Tortorella has already stated, but Andrae has looked the part in his two games thus far.
Andrae recorded his first NHL point, a primary assist on Foerster’s second period goal, to help the Flyers to a much-needed victory. You could see his vision and puck-moving chops on full display on that one.
To start the play, the 22-year-old Swedish defenseman made a line-breaking pass through three Bruins to hit Foerster at Boston’s blueline. After Foerster touched the puck onto Morgan Frost, Andrae jumped up into the play and pinched along the left wall to retrieve Foerster’s missed shot.
After Foerster reloaded at the bottom of the circles and postured in the high slot, Andrae picked up his head and made the pass. Foerster did the rest.
Andrae did have to spend a lot of the game playing defense, but he had no issues dealing with speed, size, or physicality. He blocked some shots and even got some ice time during a 5-on-3 penalty kill. The kid has been a major surprise, but he is surging through two NHL games this season.
Flyers Third Line: B
As Tortorella continued to mix and match his lines, he put together a third line combination of Joel Farabee, Scott Laughton, and Bobby Brink. All three players put in shifts, and though Brink’s ice time was again sparse, he helped make a difference.
Brink had an early scoring chance that was denied by a stunning Joonas Korpisalo save and fired off three shots on goal in total in just 11:06, the lowest on the team.
Farabee’s hard work was rewarded with an empty net goal to seal the game, while Laughton played some tough penalty kill minutes and won eight of his 12 faceoffs.
Their efforts weren’t necessarily reflected on the stat sheet aside from Farabee’s goal, but it appears that, at least for now, Tortorella has solved another one of his misfiring line combinations.
