Flyers beat Maple Leafs in shootout, 5-4, and stay alive in playoff race

The Flyers’ playoff hopes are still alive. Barely.

They delayed the inevitable with a wild 5-4 shootout win Wednesday night over Toronto at the Wells Fargo Center.

Sean Couturier scored the game-winner in the fifth round of the shootout. Carter Hart, in the first shootout of his professional career, did not allow any goals in the penalty-shot competition.

“Everyone has pride in here," Couturier said. “Whatever happens here, down the stretch we need to finish strong and build something. Just push in the same direction.”

Travis Sanheim scored on a scramble in front to give the Flyers an apparent 5-4 win with 2 minutes, 26 seconds left in overtime. But the officials ruled a whistle had been blown before Sanheim scored, so the goal was disallowed.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me that you can challenge goaltender interference, but you can’t challenge a whistle,” Sanheim said. "....I thought they were going to challenge for goaltender interference, and for me, I didn’t hit him. I was hitting the puck.”

The Flyers would have been eliminated from playoff contention with a regulation loss. They are eight points out of a wild-card spot with five games left.

"Even though our chances are really slim, I think for us what’s important is that we show the effort and the consistency that we want to have,” defenseman Radko Gudas said.

Hart stopped Tyler Ennis, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews and William Nylander in the shootout. Another dangerous player, John Tavares, lost control of the puck and never got a shot off.

“It was nice that the first shooter was one of my good buddies from back home, Tyler Ennis,” Hart said, adding the familiarity eased his nerves a bit.

Hart, who exchanged fist bumps with locker room visitor Odubel Herrera of the Phillies after the game, once competed in a shootout in World Juniors “against the Americans and I was on the wrong side of that one. I just went out there [Wednesday] and tried to stop the puck.”

Hart (38 saves) is now 8-0 when making 37 or more saves in a game.

Matthews’ 36th goal, scored when he put his own rebound upstairs and to the short side, tied the game at 3-3 with 18:17 left in regulation.

But Ryan Hartman converted a slick behind-the-goal-line pass from Scott Laughton (two assists) to score from the slot, pushing the Flyers ahead, 4-3, with 11 minutes remaining.

Toronto answered. Quickly. After a Shayne Gostisbehere miscue, Nylander scored on a spin-around shot, knotting it at 4-4 with 8:27 left.

A 3-0 second period had given the Flyers a 3-2 lead as they got goals from Travis Konecny, Gudas and Couturier.

Konecny took a feed from Sanheim, skated into the right circle and fired a shot over the glove of goalie Frederik Andresen to get the Flyers within 2-1 with 16:21 left in the first. It was Konecny’s 23rd goal, and it ended an eight-game drought.

Gudas tied it at 2-2, scoring on a wrist shot from the point with 11:45 to go in the second.

With 4:14 remaining in the second, Couturier redirected a perfect pass from Sanheim (two assists) past Andersen to give the Flyers their first lead at 3-2. For Couturier, it was his 32nd goal, a career high, and it gave him seven tallies in his last 13 games.

The Flyers fired 18 second-period shots.

“They were kind of letting us come at them,” said Konecny, who equaled a career high with eight shots on goal. “...When we come at them with that much speed, that means opportunities for our D-men shooting the puck.”

Earlier, Toronto capitalized on two Flyers miscues — blown coverage by Hartman and a turnover by Couturier — to build a 2-0 first-period lead.

Ennis got away from Corban Knight (two assists) behind the net and fed a backhand pass to fourth-line right winger Connor Brown, who got behind Hartman and scored from in front with 14:57 left in the opening period.

About seven minutes later, a Couturier giveaway led to a point-blank shot by Nazem Kadri that sailed under Hart’s glove, putting the Leafs ahead, 2-0.

But the Flyers rallied and salvaged their lone win in the three games against Toronto, which was trying to sweep a series against Philadelphia for just the third time in history.