Rangers fall to Flyers in shootout, 3-2

Raffl is considered day-to-day with an upper-body injury.

After the game, head coach Ron Hextall said Raffl was fine and was “cracking jokes”, per Sam Carchidi of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Philadelphia is already dealing with injuries to key players like Sean Couturier, who took a devastating hit from former Flyer Zac Rinaldo during a game against the Boston Bruins earlier in the week, and goaltender Michal Neuvirth. “The whole team was pretty anxious”.

The Rangers were 16-5 against Philadelphia since March 6, 2011. The silver lining is that Vancouver is 3-0-0 on the road, but of course it’s not likely that the Canucks will go far this season if they continue to struggle at the Rogers Arena.

“I felt really good during the game, but during the shootout I wasn’t very good at all”, Lundqvist said. But Mason, spinning on his pads, reached back and swatted the puck away with his stick.

Giroux’s shootout goal was a long time coming.

After Mason denied Mats Zuccarello, Gagner had a breakaway with 2 minutes, 25 seconds left in overtime and appeared to have Lundqvist beaten with a slick move, but he lost control of the puck at the last instant. A two-minute holding penalty committed by left winger Jakub Voracek gave the Rangers a man advantage and they took advantage to knot the score entering the third period.

Derek Stepan, who did not participate in Friday’s practice because of lingering pain from an oral procedure he had undergone on Wednesday, was in the lineup after skating Saturday morning. As the penalty ended on Brassard’s turnover, Simmonds darted out of the box on a two-on-one and Lundqvist had to make a kick save with his right leg. Defensively, the Philadelphia Flyers are allowing 2.7 goals per game and are killing 80.8 percent of their power play chances.

In terms of a breakdown on self-preparation against opponent preparation, Bellemare said Hakstol isn’t greatly different than former coach Craig Berube last year, but, “maybe the guys had the same system so there was less reviewing of our system last year”.

“Jarret had been slightly pushed in and his stick was obviously behind Mason a little bit, but wasn’t interfering any of his possibility of making the save”, Vigneault said. The goal also came on the power play, which gave the Rangers their third PPG in as many games. Brassard’s slap shot deflected off Flyers center Ryan White’s skate and floated past Mason.

Streit ripped a one-timer from the slot past Lundqvist for a 1-0 lead just past the midpoint of the first period. Keith Yandle, on the left boards, blindly backhanded the puck to the slot, where Lindberg tipped it into the air and toward the crease for Miller to bat in.