Flyers score seven straight in rout of Sabres

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This is the kind of luck Flyers coach Peter Laviolette has had this week.

He loses Jaromir Jagr to the flu, Andrej Meszaros to an undisclosed injury, Zac Rinaldo to a suspension and then during warmups Thursday night, Wayne Simmonds takes a deflected puck to the mouth.

Having your mouth numb like that, teeth knocked around and everything else, he was ready from the start, coach Peter Laviolette said.

Simmonds, adorned in a full bubble shield, returned early in the first period and catapulted the Flyers to a 7-2 comeback rout of the Buffalo Sabres at Wells Fargo Center with a pair of goals.

The seven markers were the most the Flyers have scored at home since their 9-2 shelling of Columbus on Nov. 5, while they finally had offensive contributions throughout their lineup.

Simmonds, who now has 20 goals, took a puck off the crossbar and missed part of the opening period being stitched up. Two teeth were loosened, while he sustained 25 stitches to the upper and lower lip.

He was hurting pretty bad, Claude Giroux said. Hes a character guy. You saw he came out and does what he does bad. Goes in front of the net and nobody can move him. He gets those garbage goals. People think its easy, but its actually pretty hard.

Simmonds was determined to make something happen and he did.

He wasnt the only Flyer injured in this game.

Danny Briere left early in the second period after being taken hard into the boards by Patrick Kaleta in the opening period. Briere may have a shoulder injury.

Tommy Sestito is believed to have injured his hand during a fight with Zack Kassian.

Give Laviolette credit for literally adjusting on the fly even before the game began, while the team gets kudos for gutting it out when the game could have easily gone south.

These are the wins that bring us together, said Max Talbot, who also tallied twice. We didnt start the way we wanted to.

We talked about it between the first and second and started to play, and never looked back. Its a win that happens at the right time. We definitely can build on that for the future.

The first period was disastrous as Buffalo burned goalie Ilya Bryzgalov for two goals on its first five shots.

We talked about things that didnt go right, which was pretty much everything, Talbot said.

Yet, the Flyers stormed back with four goals in the second period to erase the deficit, while seizing the games momentum.

We answered back, which was huge when the guys could have shut down, which showed a lot of character, Talbot said.

Bryzgalov carried a 4-2 lead into the third period before Talbot (16 goals) and Jakub Voracek (10 goals), back after missing a game with an undisclosed injury, made it 6-2 before the period was five minutes old.

Scott Hartnells 27th later represented seven unanswered goals by the Flyers.

They werent pretty goals, Talbot said. But we put a lot of traffic in front of the net and we crashed the net. It was about hard work and resiliency, and a big win for us.

After another terrible start. Barely five minutes into play, Jason Pominville snuck in behind the Flyers' defense for an easy one-timer.

Four minutes later, Thomas Vanek came streaking up the right side. Bryzgalov went to his knees as Vanek beat him over the right shoulder amid an angry chorus of boos to make it 2-0.

Replays showed Matt Carles stick redirected it on Bryzgalov. Bryz played pretty well the rest of the way, finishing with 27 saves.

Good win, he said. We responded in the second and third. I think we played pretty good hockeyWe need the points and everybody stepped up and did their own job.

Lavy gave them an undressing between periods.

It was really sleepy, but we got going in the second and third, Laviolette said. Played a really strong game from then on. But there really was no excuse for that first period. After that, to fight back like that

Now the second period was a complete turnaround. First, Talbot pocketed his first goal of the game, chopping down with his stick on Braydon Coburns point drive at 54 seconds.

Three minutes later, Simmonds battled for a slot rebound during a power play and just like that, it was 2-2 at 3:32.

With Briere now gone at this point, Laviolette had to juggle his lines. Maybe the shorter benched awakened the team because the Flyers had some jam to their game that period.

Three minutes after his first marker, Simmonds scored almost an identical goal to his first one, giving the Flyers their first lead, while chasing starting goalie Jhonas Enroth for Ryan Miller.

Rookie defenseman Erik Gustafsson scored his first NHL goal late in the period, making it 4-2.

Guys enjoyed themselves, Talbot said. When you see thing starting to roll in the right direction and the momentum start going our way, I feel we proved to ourselves that when we play the right way, were a really dangerous team.

E-mail Tim Panaccio at tpanotch@comcast.net

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