NEW YORK _ For the second straight night, the Flyers tied the game after pulling their goalie for an extra attacker.
And for the second straight night, it led to a victory.
Flyers 3, Islanders 2. In a shootout.
In the shootout, Claude Giroux scored on a gorgeous deke and Michal Neuvirth made three stops. On the last one, he poked the puck away from John Tavares.
Neuvirth redeemed himself. He allowed an awful goal late in regulation to put the Islanders ahead, 2-1.
The Flyers (6-5-1) are now 2-0 in shootouts this season.
In the overtime, Wayne Simmonds was ahead of the pack but was stopped by Jaroslav Halak with 3 minutes, 40 seconds left. With 2:26 to go, Jake Voracek was pulled down and it put the Flyers on a power play.
Halak made several keys stops on the power play to keep the game going.
With the Flyers on a six-on-four advantage, Voracek scored after a wild scramble in front to tie the score at 2-2 with 57.1 seconds remaining in regulation.
The Flyers got the power play when Casey Cizikas was charged with high-sticking Giroux with 2:45 to go. Giroux was hit in the face and went to the dressing room as part of the league's concussion protocol. He returned a short time later.
New York had taken a 2-1 lead as Neuvirth allowed a bad goal to defenseman Dennis Seidenberg with 7:05 left.
Seidenberg, a former Flyer, fired a shot from above the right circle that went through Neuvirth's legs.
About four minutes later, Giroux rocketed a shot off the left post. Giroux has his career-best 10-game points streak snapped.
With 8:55 left, Radko Gudas broke up a two-on-one to keep the score tied at 1-1. Gudas made several strong defensive plays and also contributed an assist.
Gudas is not known for his passing ability, but the burly defenseman made a great feed to send Travis Konecny on a breakaway, and the fleet rookie scored on his own rebound to put the Flyers ahead, 1-0, with 8:49 left in the second period.
It marked just the fourth time in 12 games that the Flyers had scored the first goal this season.
"I got a good pass from Gudy and I tried beating the goalie high-glove, but he read it pretty good," Konecny said after scoring his second goal of the season. "Nine times out of 10, the puck is going to bounce somewhere else, but it came right back to my stick and luckily enough I put it in."
The lead lasted a little over eight minutes. With 29 seconds left in the second period and the Islanders on a power play, Tavares tapped in a pass from Cizikas that went through defenseman Ivan Provorov's legs, knotting the score at 1-1.
The Islanders were on a five-on-three power play, but Tavares netted his fifth goal just as Nick Schultz came out of the penalty box, so technically it was scored on a five-on-four.
Penalties to Schultz (interference) and Sean Couturier (hooking) late in the second period enabled the Islanders to go into the third period tied, despite a huge territorial edge by the Flyers in the first 40 minutes.
The Flyers controlled most of the opening period, which was a rare occurrence for a team that has been outscored, 13-4, in the first 20 minutes of games this season.
But they squandered two power-play chances and left the ice in a scoreless tie after the first period. The Flyers had a 14-8 shots advantage, but the Isles had two excellent chances in the last two minutes, forcing Michal Neuvirth to make big stops on Anders Lee (backhander in front) and Nikolay Kulemin (ticketed slot shot).
Surprisingly, Neuvirth, the winner in a 4-3 overtime victory over Detroit on Wednesday, started for the second straight night. Coach Dave Hakstol had been alternating Neuvirth and Steve Mason in the previous three sets of back-to-back games.
Before the game, Hakstol said Neuvirth's previous two appearances weren't "100 percent clean, but they've been pretty good. He's made key saves at key times."
Added Hakstol: "It's early in the year. We've got two good goaltenders and we're going to need both guys playing well in order to be successful."
One of them will have to play extremely well if the Flyers are to collect any points Saturday in Montreal. The Canadiens are off to a blistering 9-0-1 start, including a 3-1 win (with an empty-netter) over the visiting Flyers on Oct. 24.
.png?w=600)
