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Flyers beat Sabres, 5-4, to tie series

Their starting goalie allowed three goals on seven shots and was pulled from the game.

Flyers' Ville Leino and Andrej Meszaros celebrate Leino's power play goal against the Sabres. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)
Flyers' Ville Leino and Andrej Meszaros celebrate Leino's power play goal against the Sabres. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)Read more

Their starting goalie allowed three goals on seven shots and was pulled from the game.

Their power play was awful, and their star defenseman was missing again because of a hand injury.

But the Flyers overcame those obstacles Saturday night and evened their getting-nastier-by-the-shift series with a wild 5-4 victory over the Buffalo Sabres at the reverberating Wells Fargo Center.

Danny Briere, facing his ex-teammates, scored what proved to be the game-winner as the Flyers tied the best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarterfinals at one game apiece.

Game 3 is Monday night in Buffalo.

After making a nice spin-around move to avoid a defender and get space in the left circle, Ville Leino beat goalie Ryan Miller on the short side to give the Flyers a 4-3 lead with 6 minutes, 24 seconds left in the second period.

Before that power-play goal, the Flyers had been 0 for 7 with an extra skater (or two) in the game and 0 for 12 in the series. They squandered a pair of five-on-three opportunities Saturday.

The second-seeded Flyers, who won last year's conference title as a seventh seed, finished the penalty-filled game 1 for 10 on the power play.

A little less than two minutes after Leino's goal, Scott Hartnell's shot deflected off Briere's left skate - he had his back to Miller in front - and into the net to push the Flyers' lead to 5-3.

Buffalo, seeded No. 7, got to within 5-4 when Cody McCormick converted Rob Niedermayer's cross from in front with 13:48 left in the third period. Goalie Brian Boucher, in as the backup, had no chance on the play.

Boucher made a key stop on Tim Connolly's left-circle drive with 3:48 to go, preserving the one-goal lead.

The series opener, Buffalo's 1-0 win on Thursday, was a tight-checking affair in which quality scoring chances were at a premium.

"It might have been the tightest game we played, defensively, all year," coach Peter Laviolette said before Saturday's opening faceoff.

And, so, naturally, the Flyers went out and played one of their loosest first periods of the season. Their penalty-killing unit was disorganized. Their rookie goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky, was flopping like a fish. Their defensemen weren't clearing bodies out front.

All of which helped Buffalo score three first-period goals - including a pair of power-play scores by Thomas Vanek - and send Bobrovsky to an early exit.

With defenseman Sean O'Donnell caught out of position, Buffalo went on a three-on-one, and defenseman Andrej Sekera beat Bobrovsky from deep in the right circle, giving the Sabres a brief 3-2 lead with 7:30 left in the first period.

Exit Bobrovsky. Enter Boucher. (Also enter a reasonable goalie question: Who starts Game 3?)

Luckily for the Flyers, the Sabres had just as many first-period defensive breakdowns. Playoff hockey? It looked more like pond hockey as the teams ended the first period deadlocked at 3-3.

The Flyers got first-period goals from Claude Giroux , Dan Carcillo and James van Riemsdyk. Giroux, who had just one goal in his previous 11 games, pounded the glass in glee after his goal gave the Flyers a 1-0 lead four minutes into the game. Carcillo was so exuberant after his goal, which gave the Flyers a 2-1 lead, that he raced down the other end of the ice and raised his hands to the screaming crowd, imploring the fans to make more noise.

"It's been pretty tough getting goals on this guy, and we're going to have to get the dirty ones around the net," Carcillo said after scoring on a rebound of Kris Versteeg's shot.

Van Riemsdyk's goal, following a turnover by 6-foot-8 defenseman Tyler Myers and a nice feed from Giroux, tied the score at 3-3 with 6:46 remaining in the first period.

It equaled the most combined goals scored in a Flyers playoff game, in any period, since 1997, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The Flyers and Rangers combined for six goals - four by Philadelphia - in the third period of a game that year. The Flyers won, 6-3, en route to reaching the Finals.

The Flyers were trying to avoid going down two games to none at home. In the franchise's history, there has been just one time in history that the Flyers lost the first two playoff games at home at won a series - the conference semifinals against Pittsburgh in 2000.

In that series, the Flyers won an epic Game 4 in five overtimes in Pittsburgh; they won four straight after losing the first two at home.

Breakaways. Defenseman Chris Pronger again was sidelined because his surgically repaired right hand is not ready. A source close to the situation said it was "50/50" that Pronger would play Game 3 in Buffalo on Monday. . . . The Flyers had 9:49 of power-play time in the second period. . . . Sekera had missed Game 1 with an upper-body injury, returned after a three-game absence. He replaced injured defenseman Shaone Morrisonn.