Carter's quick shot helps lift Flyers over Blue Jackets

JEFF CARTER shrugged and said it was nothing special.

He had tried it hundreds of times before in practice, usually to no avail. It had never worked in a game - though Carter said he used the rapid-fire reaction only a handful of times in the NHL.

Lining up to goalie Mathieu Garon's left, Carter - a righthanded centerman - snapped the puck off the faceoff and past Garon almost before it hit the ice out of the linesman's hand.

From start to finish, the whole play took less than a second. Fans and teammates barely had time to react. But Carter's quick draw - which would have beaten anyone at the O.K. Corral in the Wild West - gave the Flyers a 3-2 lead after Columbus rallied to erase a 2-0 deficit, and propelled Philadelphia to a 5-3 victory over the Blue Jackets last night at the Wachovia Center.

"I don't try it every game,'' Carter said of the play, which came midway through the second period. "It was just something to try and catch them off-guard. I've come close and hit the goalie in the pads, but I've never scored on it, so that was pretty cool. I just do it if I feel like doing it. Just trying to catch him off-guard. Honestly, faceoffs are half luck.''

The Flyers, who moved up to ninth in the Eastern Conference with the win, never have lost to Columbus (3-0-1) at the Wachovia Center.

More important, the Flyers avoided letting two straight losses turn into three and earned their third consecutive win at home as they began a six-game homestand.

"It's really important,'' said Ray Emery, who stopped 25 of 28 shots. "You never want to put a string of games together that you're not happy with. You never want to let one turn into two. Being able to step up and put the foot down tonight, I thought that was great."

The Flyers took that foot off the gas pedal for a few minutes in the second period and allowed former Flyer R.J. Umberger to single-handedly erase a 2-0 lead in a span of 5:42.

"We kind of slipped into a coma there for 5 or 10 minutes in the second period," defenseman Chris Pronger said.

Unguarded in front, Umberger whacked two different rebounds, which were sitting there for the taking, behind Emery in his first game back in Philly since he was traded in 2008. Emery called them "funny goals."

Pronger snuck in from the point and added a power-play goal with 52 seconds remaining in the second period. Pronger's goal, his seventh of the season, gave the Flyers a 4-2 lead heading into the final frame.

Then Dan Carcillo chased Garon from the game when he made it 5-2 in the third period with a wrist shot from the top of the circle.

But it was Carter's first goal of the game - only 58 seconds into the contest - that gave the Flyers an important, 1-0 edge. They have scored the game's first goal in 12 of their last 13 outings. Their record in that span: 9-3-1.

"We want to get that first goal,'' Pronger said. "Get our feet underneath us and get the crowd behind us.''

Claude Giroux found Arron Asham in front of the net early in the second period with an unbelievable backhand pass through traffic, giving the fans another reason to cheer. That made it 2-0.

Carter's second goal, though, was the game-changer.

"The third goal was the difference," Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock said. "We came back, we were playing really well, tied, 2-2. The third goal goes in and took the momentum out of it."

With the game essentially decided, 5-2, the final 10:48 left Umberger and Carter racing for the hat trick. It would have been fitting, on Orange Crush baseball hat giveaway night, to have a reason to throw one.

Carter missed two point-blank chances in the third, one coming on the power play. But Umberger, with his father watching while along for the road trip, came the closest. He was just a few inches from tipping in Anton Stralman's point shot that made it 5-3 in the final minutes.

In fact, he was so close that fans thought he redirected it and threw their hats on the ice. It didn't matter that it was a Blue Jackets goal. A few hundred landed before PA announcer Lou Nolan could say it was Rick Nash's goal.

"With them noticing the effort I put in here and how much it meant for me to be a Flyer, it was a great feeling," Umberger said.

Still, Umberger and his teammates, who were subjected to a team meeting after the game, didn't leave with a great feeling. That belonged to Carter and the Flyers.

"We wanted to make some strides on this homestand," captain Mike Richards said. "We got contributions from a lot of different guys. That's [Carter's] game, his speed and that quick shot. He's got that quick way and he shoots it through people."

Only two Flyers, Ole-Kristian Tollefsen and Claude Giroux, did not have a shot on goal . . . Ian Laperriere's second-period scrap with Mathieu Roy, which helped give the Flyers some momentum back after R.J. Umberger's goals, was a draw . . . Oskars Bartulis, who was a minus-10 in the seven games prior, was a plus-3 . . . Darroll Powe had a game-high five hits.

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

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