New Line Combos Lead To Offensive Outburst For Flyers
Line combinations are all about chemistry. There’s a reason Peter Laviolette kept the trio of Danny Briere, Ville Leino and Scott Hartnell together for so long – they had chemistry that flourished during the playoffs and continued for the season’s first three months.
But a two-game losing skid during which the Flyers looked out of sorts and uninspired called for major change. So that’s what Laviolette did: He split up that line and churned out entirely different combinations.
Briere with James van Riemsdyk and Mike Richards; Leino with Andreas Nodl and Claude Giroux; and Hartnell with Jeff Carter and Nikolay Zherdev. Laviolette, you evil genius.
It worked – to the tune of an offensive explosion and a 7-4 Flyers victory over the Kings at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
“Sometimes you just need a little bit of a shakeup to get things going and maybe a little bit of a beginners luck with the lines, Richards told reporters. “But it was nice to get.”
No line clicked better than the combination of Briere, van Riemsdyk and Richards. It almost looked like they had been playing together all season. Each of the three scored (Richards twice), with serious chemistry shining through especially on Richards’ second goal as van Riemsdyk slid a perfect pass to him just outside the crease. The trio combined for eight points and finished with a plus-4 rating.
Overall, the Flyers had so much offense it didn’t matter that Michael Leighton was not at his best in his first start of the season. Leighton gave up a goal 2:39 in on the fifth shot he faced – one scored by Ryan Smyth in an eerily similar way to how Patrick Kane ended the Flyers’ season in overtime of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
This one went five-hole, too – off Leighton’s skate and into the net. But the Flyers’ offense was rolling. So even when he gave up another soft goal (five-hole again), his teammates picked him up as Richards scored, then Hartnell, then Richards again.
Leighton gave up a couple more goals the rest of the way but got into a rhythm by the third period. His final line: 32 saves on 36 shots, and no goals in the third.
“The team really saved my butt tonight,” Leighton told reporters. “They did a great job scoring some goals for me.”
That’s because the Flyers responded to their coach’s shake-up and broke out in a big way.
In fact, that old line of Briere, Hartnell and Leino? Each one of them scored – but never with another former linemate on the ice. To paraphrase an old Phillies saying, “Everybody scores.”
“It wasn’t our best game, but sometimes it’s a game like that you need,” Briere told reporters. “When you can’t score goals, you need an ugly one to get going. Sometimes when you have a hard time winning, you need an ugly one to turn things around.”
Comments