The St. Louis Blues will go for their third straight victory under new head coach Jim Montgomery when the Philadelphia Flyers visit on Saturday night.
Since Montgomery replaced the fired Drew Bannister last weekend, the Blues have responded with two wins by a combined margin of 8-2. They blanked the New Jersey Devils 3-0 on Wednesday as Jordan Binnington stopped 31 shots for his 16th career shutout.
Binnington’s 152nd career victory for the Blues snapped a tie for the franchise record that he had held with Mike Liut.
“It’s nice just to get it and to accomplish something like that,” said Binnington, who needed only 298 games to break the franchise mark. “It’s just a matter of being here long enough to get those wins and to compound those wins over time. I’m proud to be here, and I’m proud to have that many wins.”
Binnington’s first NHL win was a shutout against the Flyers — a 3-0 blanking back on Jan. 7, 2019. He famously helped the Blues win the Stanley Cup later that season as part of a sizzling start to his NHL career.
Speaking of fast starts, Robert Thomas converted nine seconds into the game against New Jersey, and then Dylan Holloway added two goals later in the period to account for all of the scoring.
“We obviously started great, came with tons of energy,” said Blues captain Brayden Schenn, a former Flyer. “Tons of emotion early and got rewarded for it. We surprised them a little bit. They’re a great team over there with tons of speed.”
The Flyers can attack their opponent with speed, as well, and that is partially what has led to the team’s 3-0-1 stretch over the last four games. Philadelphia slipped past the New York Rangers 3-1 on Friday afternoon as Travis Konecny scored a pair of goals and Tyson Foerster made a highlight-reel pass to Bobby Brink for another.
“I think we played the way we wanted to, followed the game plan perfectly,” Brink said. “And it led to success against a great team.”
Ivan Fedotov made 22 saves for the Flyers, who continue to play well despite the absence of starting goaltender Samuel Ersson. Fedotov and Aleksei Kolosov essentially have split time in net while Ersson recovers from a lower-body injury.
“They’ve played good,” coach John Tortorella said of his backup goalies. “It was a tough game for Feds today — not much action watching (the Rangers’ Ilya Shesterkin) just stand on his head. (Fedotov) made some really key saves at key times. … Those two guys have done the job and kept us in games when we’ve struggled and made important saves at important times.”
The Flyers (11-10-3) are above .500 for the first time since they defeated the Vancouver Canucks in their season opener. They will play 11 of their next 16 games on the road.
“It’s a huge stretch of games,” forward Noah Cates said, “but I feel like we got through a tough couple stretches in November with the schedule, and to come out of that and to get our record up to .500 is huge for us.”
The Flyers defeated the Blues in Philadelphia on Halloween night as Brink scored on a redirection with 3:01 left to secure a 2-1 victory.
–Field Level Media
