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Gagne ignores broken toe, scores game-winner for Flyers vs. Bruins

SIMON GAGNE skated only one shift in the overtime period last night. He didn't play a single second of the first 14 minutes of the extra session, clearly favoring his still-fractured right toe - which required two screws to be inserted only 15 days ago.

Simon Gagne scored the game-winning goal in overtime of Game 4 to keep the Flyers' hopes alive. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)
Simon Gagne scored the game-winning goal in overtime of Game 4 to keep the Flyers' hopes alive. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)Read more

SIMON GAGNE skated only one shift in the overtime period last night.

He didn't play a single second of the first 14 minutes of the extra session, clearly favoring his still-fractured right toe - which required two screws to be inserted only 15 days ago.

During the stoppages in overtime, Gagne gingerly tested the foot by skating circles near the Flyers' bench.

What started as a painful shift with 14:10 elapsed in the first OT ended only 30 seconds later with pure jubilation. His goal - and chance to play hero - was the exact reason why he decided to push the envelope and return to his teammates at their most desperate hour.

Gagne knocked in a Matt Carle pass to prolong the Flyers' season at least another 60 minutes with a 5-4 win in Game 4, as the Flyers averted a four-game sweep at the hands of the Boston Bruins in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Game 5 is Monday night in Boston at the TD Garden.

"It was a good ending," Gagne said. "I couldn't ask for more, to be able to come back early in the series and be able to score a big goal. It always feels good to score a goal, but when you get those big ones in overtime, it is the best feeling in the world."

Gagne's feel-good goal came only moments after the Flyers experienced the worst feeling in the world: coughing up a two-goal lead once in an elimination game. The Flyers held leads of 3-1 and 4-2, but neither was safe.

They were only 31.5 seconds away from escaping with a 4-3 win in regulation when Boston's Mark Recchi jammed in a one-timer from Patrice Bergeron in the same spot where Gagne would later score his.

"That was very huge for us, to come back," Gagne said. "We could have easily gone down and not gone out there and played the same way [in the overtime]. But we found a way to get that goal."

It was the goal - the game-winning goal - that the Flyers missed out on in Games 1 and 2 in Boston, when they had a chance to take either game.

Goalie Brian Boucher said the Flyers' mind-set in their locker room during the third intermission, was to forget about the lead they just blew. They didn't have a choice. On the goal that cut it to 3-2, Boucher knocked the puck in the net with his own pad.

"Unfortunately, we squandered a few-goal lead there," Boucher said after stopping 33 of 37 shots. "It shows a lot about our character. We just said that we needed to forget what just happened. We said to just stay with it, we knew that someone was going to be the hero."

Ville Leino was almost that hero. Leino caused the Wachovia Center to erupt when he redirected Chris Pronger's point shot past Tuukka Rask (29 saves) with 5:40 to go in the third period.

That lead seemed safe - until Recchi did the unthinkable and scored his second goal of the game.

Recchi's goal left an opening for Gagne in the hero department. Flyers coach Peter Laviolette called it a "really gutsy effort."

"It was Simon's call," Laviolette said. "Everything had subsided, and he wanted to go back out and try it a little bit just on that shift. I told him if things weren't good to just get off and we would put someone else in."

Gagne readily acknowledged he wasn't 100 percent ready to play before the game.

"I wasn't in game shape," he said. "I didn't do anything for 2 weeks. But it's playoff hockey. It's very fast. It was hard to catch my breath sometimes."

"It shows a lot about his character," Boucher said. "He's playing hurt. We all knew that. You need that in the playoffs."

"It's that time of year," Pronger said. "If you're not hurt, you're not playing in the playoffs. For him to grin and bear it, and come up with that big goal, it was huge for us. We're going to need more of that on Monday."

Coming back last night opened up new opportunities for Claude Giroux, who scored the Flyers' third goal in the second period - and his first of the series after four in the first round. Giroux skated with James van Riemsdyk and Arron Asham and created a number of opportunities.

Now, all of a sudden, the Flyers have the momentum heading back to Beantown. They have scoring and confidence from all three lines, something they lacked in the first three games of this series.

"We feel good about ourselves," Boucher said. "Now, I think, the pressure is on them. We still have nothing to lose."

Big goal or not, Gagne knows the Flyers still have three more games to win - with two of them in Boston. The mountain is still tall. But it doesn't seem all that daunting now.

"Let's face it," Gagne said. "It's one goal. It's a good feeling. And it's a good start. But we've got a lot of work left."

Slap shots

Dan Carcillo sat out much of the third period and overtime, but he remained on the Flyers' bench. The Flyers did not release a medical update, but a team source told the Daily News that Carcillo was having a knee issue . . . Matt Carle finished with four assists and a plus-5 rating . . . Chris Pronger added a goal and an assist in 37:33 . . . Kimmo Timonen was a team-worst minus-2 . . . Andreas Nodl led the Flyers with six hits . . . Boston blocked 12 more shots than the Flyers . . . This is only the second time in seven tries the Flyers averted a sweep when trailing, 3-0, in a series. *

For more news and analysis, read Frank Seravalli's blog, Frequent Flyers, at

http://go.philly.com/frequentflyers.