Wild blow 2-goal lead, fall to Flyers in overtime
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Joel Farabee scored his second goal of the night at 3:36 of overtime to give the Philadelphia Flyers a 4-3 victory over the Minnesota Wild on Friday night.
Tyson Forester and Owen Tippett also scored for the Flyers, who have won three of four. Carter Hart made 26 saves.
Marcus Johansson, Ryan Hartman and Matt Boldy scored for the Wild, who are 1-7 since losing star forward Kirill Kaprizov to an injury on Dec. 30.
Minnesota’s Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 31 shots as he remained tied with Patrick Roy for second place on the NHL's career victories list.
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Early in the overtime period, Minnesota’s Mats Zuccarello was called for tripping. The Wild killed off most of the resulting 4-on-3, but as the power play was expiring, Farabee tipped in a shot by Egor Zamula for the game-winner.
“I think it’s just kind of been the story of our team all year,” Farabee said. “Doesn’t matter what’s going on in the game, we try to pick each other up.”
Tied 1-1 entering the third, the pace of play picked up, with Minnesota striking twice and Philadelphia rallying to send the game into overtime.
“We weren’t developing a whole bunch of offense. They weren’t either,” Flyers coach John Tortorella said. “But in the third period both teams got going, and we ended up scoring one more than them.”
Minnesota scored two goals in less than three minutes early in the third to take a 3-1 lead. Hartman one-timed a pass from Alex Gologoski at the bottom of the left faceoff circle for his 13th goal of the season. Boldy then slammed home a feed from Jake Middleton for his 15th of the year.
But the Flyers scored twice in a minute and a half to tie it back up at 3-3. First, Forester buried a cross-ice pass from Scott Laughton. Then, on a delayed penalty, Tippett beat Fleury with a wrister from the left circle at 10:56 of the third.
“I think when we went down two there early in the third, we didn’t really think anything of it,” Tippett said. “We just kept going shift after shift and knew it was going to come. So it shows a lot of kind of what we have in this room, and it’s a big win for us.”
On blowing the two-goal lead, Minnesota defenseman Brock Faber said, “I think maybe we did get a little soft on pucks, a little soft in our system. And every team in this league will take advantage of that.”
After a scoreless first period, Johansson put the Wild on top less than a minute into the second. Joel Eriksson Ek scooped up a turnover at the Minnesota blue line and hit Johansson with a breakout pass. Johansson carried it into the high slot and flipped a wrist shot past Hart for his sixth goal of the season.
Philadelphia tied it less than three minutes later when Travis Konecny feathered a pass into the slot, where Farabee redirected it past Fleury. It was the first of two assists on the night for Konecny, who leads the Flyers with 39 points.
On Saturday night, the Flyers are at Winnipeg and the Wild host Arizona.