Flyers aim to spoil Rangers' playoff chances again

PHILADELPHIA -- Columbus Blue Jackets broadcaster Jody Shelley does what a lot of retired NHL players do when they think back to their playing days.

The game between the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, TVAS) opened the box of what-if's he has from his 12-season career.

Because 15 years ago, he was a Rangers forward starting a season-ending, home-and-home set against the Flyers that began April 9, 2010, in New York and ended with a shootout victory two days later in Philadelphia that launched one team on an unlikely path to the Stanley Cup Final while the other was left sitting home and watching.

"[The Flyers] were down 3-0 to Boston that year," Shelley said. "You look at all those things that went right for them to get where they made it. You always look back in your career at moments like that, think what-if. That's what happens with retired players. ... Being a Ranger was so great, and being in that moment.

"We got on the train and came back to New York, and they went on."

The Flyers season had been a roller coaster ride. It began with high expectations following the offseason acquisition of defenseman Chris Pronger, but a slow start led to the firing of coach John Stevens on Dec. 3, 2009, who was replaced by Peter Laviolette. They were 14th of 15 teams in the Eastern Conference on Dec. 21.

"We were a very good team, we believed in ourselves," said Brian Boucher, a Flyers goalie that season and now a broadcaster for the team. "We just had a lot of issues throughout the year."

The Rangers were in their first full season under coach John Tortorella, who had replaced Tom Renney on Feb. 23, 2009. They had their own ups and downs but were 6-1-1 entering the final weekend of the regular season and needed to win both games to reach the postseason.

It was a run Shelley said was sparked in part by a conversation he had with Mark Messier the day after a 2-1 loss to the Boston Bruins on March 21 left them five points out of a playoff spot with 10 games remaining.

"I went into the lunchroom, and Mark Messier was sitting there by himself," Shelley said. "Everyone was crowded around one table ... so I asked 'Mess' if I could sit with him. He asked, 'How was practice today?' I said it was a little down, which was to be expected. We kind of feel like we didn't do ourselves a favor. And he said to me, 'You guys have 10 games left. That's an eighth of your season. There's a lot of hockey left. And so you guys have got to realize the opportunity you have. You're not out of it.'

"I left that conversation, and the next day in practice, I talked to [team captain Chris] Drury, and I said the same thing. I said we got a lot of hockey left here. We got to make sure we understand the opportunity. And then we had a meeting and that was the message, let's get this together and realize the opportunity we have and we kind of went on a run there. I'm not saying it was the meeting. It just kind of was a mindset of, hey, there's a lot to go."

And it was Shelley surprisingly keying the charge in Game 81. Midway through the first period, Shelley found himself alone in the slot after a face-off in the Philadelphia zone, and he beat Boucher for his first goal of the season to put the Rangers ahead 2-1 at 10:13.

Brandon Dubinsky pushed the lead to 3-1 at 6:58 of the second period before the Flyers tied it on goals by Daniel Brière and Mike Richards.

Marian Gaborik scored the game-winner when he stole the puck from Pronger at the Flyers blue line and scored at 16:54 for the 4-3 final.

Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist made 10 saves in the third to preserve the lead.

"We were down by one, goalie pulled and we tried frantically to tie it," Boucher said. "I just remember watching from the bench us not scoring, and seeing 'Hank' celebrate. And I was so mad that we weren't able to get two points that game. I really wanted to make it right on home ice the next one. So I was excited for it. I wouldn't say extra motivated, because there's plenty to be motivated for, but I was fired up for the next game."

The Flyers practiced Saturday with a plan.

"When we got in that morning, it was one of those things where 'Lavi' had a hunch," Briere said. "He had a hunch that the game would get to a shootout."

Laviolette had Briere, Richards, Claude Giroux, Simon Gagne and Jeff Carter watch video of Lundqvist in shootouts before practice, and then work on their shootout moves after.

"He asked us to pick a move or two and work on that and at the end of practice ... the five of us stayed extra and took shootout practice on our goalies," Briere said.

The Rangers also worked on shootouts at the end of practice Saturday, but that was a daily occurrence.

"We did that every practice with Hank, all those guys did that every practice," Shelley said. "Hank did it after every single practice pretty much, he practiced shootouts."

In the five seasons the shootout had been in place to that point, Lundqvist was second with 30 shootout wins and his .755 save percentage was fourth among goalies to play in at least 15 shootouts.

It wasn't long after the puck dropped in Philadelphia on Sunday that New York took a 1-0 lead when Shelley tipped a Michal Rozsival shot past Boucher at 3:27.

It marked the only time Shelley scored in back-to-back NHL games.

"Got him a nice three-year deal," Boucher said of Shelley, who signed a three-year contract with the Flyers on July 1, 2010.

The Flyers tied the game in the second period on Matt Carle's power-play goal, but that was all they could get, despite outshooting the Rangers 47-25 through overtime.

"I felt they were just defending to get to overtime and get to a shootout," Briere said. "I probably would have done the same thing with the goalie they had."

Briere went first in the shootout, and he immediately flashed back to his post-practice work from the day before. He skated through the middle of the ice, deked and lifted a shot over Lundqvist's left pad.

"I knew exactly what I was going to do," he said. "I usually always had three options going into a shootout. But in this one, I had seen Lundqvist enough. I had had enough shootouts against him and seen him enough, I knew which way I went. I just had to get it over his pad."

It may have looked smooth, but Briere, who was in the third season of an eight-year, $52 million contract ($6.5 million average annual value) that made him the highest paid player on the team, said he needed an extra moment to gather himself.

"I jumped on the ice and then all kinds of thoughts went to my head," he said. "You start thinking about, 'Oh, my God, this is for a lot of money.' And then you start thinking, 'This is why they brought me in.' If you see the clip, I take a detour. I go and I take my time, because I needed to reset and get in the right frame of mind, because I was at the wrong place, and I had to refocus and start thinking about, 'OK, you know your move, you've practiced it 10-12 times yesterday. You can make it. See the net. Don't see the goalie, just see the net. See the net.' And then I just put it back in place.

"I can't even tell you what the fans were doing, what our bench was doing. I don't know if our players were standing or sitting. I don't know if the fans were standing or sitting. I don't know if we had music was playing. I don't remember anything. It's like zoomed in. There's a baseball movie about that, 'For Love of the Game,' when [Kevin Costner] starts pitching, and you see everything shuts down. It was one of those moments.

"You always talk about that and you want to get there. This was the clearest example that I've ever faced in my career, where I could see the difference of just shutting out everything and just focusing on that. Because when you play, there's so many players, there's so many things going on, so you can't just close off on kind of one target. But this is a 1-on-1. Nobody's in the way between you and the goalie. It was really cool at that moment how everything shuts down, and I don't know anything else, except the path to the goalie. It was awesome."

Rangers forward Erik Christensen was next. To that point, his 52.9 percent success rate on shootouts (18 goals on 34 attempts) was third among all players, but Boucher got his blocker on the attempt.

Richards tried to score blocker side, but Lundqvist turned it aside with his stick.

PA Parenteau, the Rangers' second shooter, scored when his attempt ramped up Boucher's stick and over his shoulder.

"I backed in too quickly on the second one," Boucher said. "And even though Parenteau lost it, it went off my stick and up and over me. But I was backing in too fast and I think nerves were getting to me."

He had a chance to settle himself while Giroux scored on his attempt, skating through the middle of the ice, slowing at the hash marks, and snapping a shot between Lundqvist's pads.

Olli Jokinen was next over the boards for the Rangers.

A goal kept New York's season alive. A save clinched the win and the postseason for Philadelphia.

Jokinen was 5-for-10 on shootouts to that point in 2009-10, but none of the attempts had come against the Flyers.

"Didn't really have a book on him," Boucher said. "I think what you're trying to do in that moment is to not let the enormity of the situation eat you up. Admittedly, I was very nervous for that shootout. Hank is the best shootout goalie we've ever seen, and it felt like they were playing to get to the shootout. You could feel it. You could sense it after we tied it, that that's what they were trying to get to, knowing that they had the best shootout goal in the world. I just was trying to just calm myself down and not get ahead of myself, focus in."

Jokinen started his run-up to the puck from the goal line in the Rangers end and hit center ice at full speed. He skated in and tried to deke Boucher's pads open, but Boucher kept his stick down and made the save.

"Fortunately for me Jokinen tried to go five hole, and I had five hole covered," Boucher said. "Probably everywhere else I didn't."

As Boucher danced a one-legged jig into a jubilant pile of Flyers, the Rangers skated into the offseason.

"It's crazy ... you think of that moment and think of the magnitude in the last game," Shelley said. "Down the stretch, it was just playing hockey, and we had the best goalie in the world in Henrik Lundqvist."

The Flyers' remarkable run continued with a rally from 3-0 down against the Boston Bruins in the second round, and ended in overtime of Game 6 of the Final against the Chicago Blackhawks.

But what if Lundqvist makes one more save? What if Jokinen scores the winner?

That Flyers team had high expectations, and it's likely there would have been changes, from the general manager's suite to the roster.

"We had some big-time players," said Briere, in his third season as Flyers general manager. "There's a lot of money spent on our salaries. We were supposed to win. We had a team built to win. I really don't know what would have happened, but I'm sure that it would not have been pretty."

Could the Rangers have had the same kind of run if they had gotten in? Shelley noted the core of that group reached the Eastern Conference Final in 2012, and the Stanley Cup Final in 2014.

"We had some great pieces, [Ryan] Callahan, Dubinsky," he said. "Everyone had a role, Gaborik, everybody was there, [Dan] Girardi was there, [Marc] Staal.

"I needed to score one more goal."