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Saving Grace: Flyers Rely on Carter Hart to Spark Emotional Win Over Ducks

Anthony SanFilippo

By Anthony SanFilippo

Published:

Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

There’s no doubt that there was a wave of emotion that came over the Flyers Tuesday.

It was the first time they got to see their teammate Oskar Lindblom since his diagnosis with Ewing’s Sarcoma. He visited the team at the morning skate and was present again at the game, a 4-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks that stopped a three-game losing streak.

There was love and support for Lindblom everywhere. The one orange Lindblom jersey hanging amid all the purple Hockey Fights Cancer warm-ups in the Flyers locker room.

The “I fight for Oskar” placards taped to every seat in the Wells Fargo Center.

A first period video tribute.

Players took a second to pause and collect themselves when talking about him. It was evident. It was raw emotion. It was, as Jake Voracek said, “bittersweet” – knowing that there is a lot of love and support for Oskar but still knowing the fight he is facing.

And it was a much-needed victory for a team that was reeling a bit, not only dealing with the Lindblom news, but also dealing with more injuries and a ridiculous suspension to Joel Farabee.

And yet despite all that, and despite knowing how emotional the game was going to be, coach Alain Vigneault knew the Flyers were going to need one thing in particular.

Saves.

“I knew it was going to be a hard game for us,” Vigneault said. “It was going to be a hard game because we were coming back from the west coast there and a tough trip coming back and obviously seeing Oskar this morning was going to be emotional for the group…. so I knew it was going to be hard. I definitely knew we needed some saves. We got some saves. Instead of chasing the game, Carter [Hart] made some big saves, permitted us to start to get going a little bit in the first. Find our ways, find the game a little bit.”

Oh, Hart made some saves all right. He made 40. That’s the most this season and tied for the third most he’s made in his career, which, ironically, began exactly one year ago to the day Tuesday.

And now, in his career, Hart is 11-1-0 in games when he’s faced 38 shots or more.

And if you weren’t sure, this was Hart’s best game this season, and maybe of the last calendar year that he’s been in the NHL.

Sure, he’s had games with more ten-bell saves. Sure he’s had games where he’s had to seemingly bail his team out for poor play in front of him that might be more memorable.

But this one was so good because of how poised he was in net. He was smart. He was positionally sound. He was a total foil to the Anaheim gameplan.

After his media scrum was over, I pulled him aside and asked him if the Ducks were shooting high on him a lot tonight. He smiled a knowing smile and said, “Yeah, it seemed that way.”

He said it wasn’t in the pre-scout of Anaheim that they were a team that liked to shoot high and he added that it wasn’t something he remembered them doing a lot last season either.

But he wouldn’t tell me if that was something they were trying to do because it might be the “book” on Hart.

He smiled again when I asked him if facing shots up high was something he has focused on more at practice lately – which was my way of trying to find out if this is, in fact, his weak spot that other teams might exploit – but Hart deftly deflected my question away (his 41st save of the night?) saying that he works on all aspects of his game at practice.

Well played Carter. Well played.

Regardless, Anaheim was only able to score the one goal on Hart and it was on the power play. The rest of the time, Hart was equal to the task. And on all those high shots, Hart expertly stood tall and shrugged them aside whether it was with a shoulder save, or getting square to the shooter and letting the shot get muffled in his chest, or it was a glove save. All of them were muted by Hart.

Heck, he even stopped one with the crown of his head:

He’s been really good since an early season blip when he struggled a few games in a row. In fact:

https://twitter.com/JameyBaskow/status/1207271110225596417

The Flyers may have had some extra emotion playing their first home game since the Lindblom news, with their teammate in the building and small, but supportive crowd in the stands (The announced crowd was 18,449, which makes me wonder if they were counting the “I Fight for Oskar” placards as people), but the reason the Flyers won this game was because of the goalie. A very deserving first star.

Other items of note:

1. David Kase scored his first NHL goal and it ended up being the game-winner. That’s always a cool thing, but he did it playing for the first time against his older brother Ondrej Kase on Anaheim and with his parents having flown in to see the brothers play each other from the Czech Republic.

Here’s the goal:

https://twitter.com/NHLcz/status/1207284490957144064

Heck of a celebration at the end too. Good for the kid, who was thrilled to talk to the media after the game. He was grinning from ear-to-ear the entire time. It was pretty fun to see.

And don’t think his teammates didn’t notice:

There’s so much to like about this video. Jake Voracek being called Pumba and Kase, Timon? Sean Couturier singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight?” Kevin Hayes screaming “Me too” after Kase’s speech. There’s a lot I criticize about the business operations side of things with the Flyers, but their social media has been fan-freaking-tastic this year.

2. Travis Konecny returned to the lineup after missing nine days with a concussion. He never practiced with the team in that time, so getting back up to speed was a bit challenging for him, however, he had enough in him to make this sick pass on the first goal of the game by Claude Giroux:

3. On The Press Row Show at the second intermission, one of our regular viewers, Mike Aceto, commented that he wanted to see Voracek go to the net more and shoot the puck. Then this happened:

I think Mike was happy.

4. Morgan Frost had a really strong game. It was under the radar, but definitely a game where he looked more comfortable. He played with Voracek and Kase and picked up an assist on Kase’s goal. Vigneault mentioned him post-game, unprompted. Usually when the coach does that, that means he was impressed with the player despite not really making a huge impact to the score sheet. Frost can build off that as he tries to rebound from some struggles of late.

5. The Flyers are definitely playing with a lot of AHLers because of their lineup turmoil. Some people were wondering why guys like Kase and Nicholas Aube-Kubel got the call. Well, both are fast, determined puck hounds who also play bigger than their size. Kase, of course, scored a goal and then Aube-Kubel made his presence felt like this:

The Flyers are in a bit of survival mode right now, and if they keep getting these kinds of efforts, they’ll be just fine when they get most of their guys back.

Anthony SanFilippo
Anthony SanFilippo

Anthony SanFilippo writes about the Phillies and Flyers for Crossing Broad and hosts a pair of related podcasts (Crossed Up and Snow the Goalie). A part of the Philadelphia sports media for a quarter century, Anthony also dabbles in acting, directing, teaching, and strategic marketing, which is why he has no time to do anything, but does it anyway. Follow him on Twitter @AntSanPhilly.

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