The Philadelphia Flyers won their season-opening meetup with former captain Claude Giroux and the Ottawa Senators, a 5-4 overtime thriller. It was a back-and-forth effort that the Flyers led 1-0, trailed 4-2, then ultimately prevailed in.
Philadelphia was outshot 37-19, but that didn’t stop them from coming out on top. Travis Sanheim opened the scoring with assists from Emil Andrae and Garnet Hathaway to make it 1-0, but that’s where things went the other way.
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Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk knotted the game up, while Drake Batherson’s power-play one-timer made it a lead. Travis Konecny struck to tie the game again heading into the third period, but Josh Norris’ dagger 4:27 into the final frame made the Flyers start back at square one. Adam Gaudette’s power-play goal made it 4-2 and put the game out of reach with less than 10 minutes to go.
Well, that was until Anthony Richard’s marker to make it interesting. Shortly after, Richard came down the wing with a rebound-creating shot that went to Bobby Brink, who scored and tied it 4-4. The Flyers survived and forced overtime.
In the extra frame, the Flyers spent a lot of time in their own zone. When they finally got out, rookie Matvei Michkov got on the ice and made his presence felt. Courtesy of a Konecny dish, he placed a perfect shot past Senators netminder Linus Ullmark from an impossible angle. That’s the first game-winning goal of his career.
With the recap aside, what were some takeaways from the night?
Fedotov Growing More Comfortable
For a while, the Flyers’ backup goaltending has been their Achilles’ heal. Good starts from their non-Samuel Ersson netminders have been rare, which greatly attributed to the team’s collapse last season and their sluggish start this go around, as well.
Ivan Fedotov, who signed a $3.275 million cap-hit contract to be the Flyers’ backup for the next two seasons, was at risk of losing his job after three worrying starts in 2024-25. He didn’t seem like an NHL goalie, so the Flyers went into action by calling up 22-year-old Aleksei Kolosov from the American Hockey League (AHL). An injury to Ersson gave Fedotov one final chance on Nov. 7, and he took advantage with a 2-1 shootout win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. Tonight (Nov. 14), another ailment to Ersson allowed Fedotov to do it again. He didn’t exactly follow that effort up with an elite one on…
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