Philly was flying until being grounded by Jets

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This article was published 20/11/2011 (5070 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since the Philadelphia Flyers and Winnipeg Jets last assembled for a 17-goal game on Oct. 27, the Flyers have risen to the top of the Eastern Conference standings via run of 6-0-2.

The wheels came off in a hurry in the MTS Centre on Saturday afternoon as the Flyers spotted the Jets three goals and lost 6-4.

That’s twice the Flyers have lost to Winnipeg this season, and they weren’t thrilled about it.

“We didn’t do a very good job killing penalties, taking penalties, soft play,” said Flyers captain Chris Pronger. “Against a team like that, that’s playing with confidence and moving the puck around, you’re going to get behind. We let them get off to a great start and they kind of coasted in from there.”

The Flyers were also, arguably, the NHL’s most proficient road team heading for Saturday’s game here, 6-1-1 away from the Wells Fargo Center. It was suggested to Pronger, however, that his team was ambushed on Saturday by an improving Jets outfit.

“It takes two,” Pronger said. “When you’re not ready to compete and play hard and do all the little things… we let them skate around and do what they wanted to do and that’s going to be the result, that first 10 minutes.”

The obvious question for Pronger was what he thought of the sometimes unruly MTS Centre fans booing him most of the day.

A bother?

“No, it was playoff-style atmosphere,” Pronger smiled. “They’re obviously excited to have a team back here and they’re boisterous and energetic and it’s fun to play in games like that.”

Among his family and friends in attendance, the Dryden, Ont., native said his grandparents were in the crowd.

“They got to see a barn-burner,” Pronger grinned.

That style of game wasn’t exactly what the Flyers would have preferred, but an early too-many-men penalty opened the door for another Flyers-Jets wild one.

“When you have penalty trouble early, it’s tough to get the bench going and get guys into the game,” said forward Scott Hartnell, who had three points on the afternoon.

Still, the Flyers had the Jets on the run late in the game until Nik Antropov hit the empty net.

“We had a good feeling on the bench that we were going to come back, at least tie it up and get a point in overtime,” Hartnell said. “It wasn’t meant to be. We had some stupid plays, some careless sticks, and our power play couldn’t tie it up.”

Flyers coach Peter Laviolette was not in a talkative mood after the defeat and said he did consider replacing starting goalie Sergei Bobrovsky at 3-0 or 5-1, but decided against it.

“There were a lot of specialty-team goals,” Laviolette said. “(Bobrovsky) made some spectacular saves in there and then we started to do the same thing down at the other end. He did a terrific job of keeping it where it was at.”

Laviolette also said playing Bobrovsky instead of No. 1 keeper Ilya Bryzgalov had nothing to do with the negative remarks about Winnipeg (and subsequent apology on Friday) by Bryzgalov while in Phoenix last March.

“No, we’re just in a part of the schedule here where we’ll get some rotation out of the goaltending,” Laviolette said.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca