Flyers win when Carcillo plays

In a lineup of 20 contributors, it's often hard to tell exactly what the numbers mean.

How much of an impact can one player have on the team's overall success?

With one of the deepest lineups in the NHL - if not the deepest - and a mainly healthy roster, more than one player is usually left watching the game from the press box.

Last night, in a 5-2 win over the Canadiens, it was defensemen Matt Walker and Oskars Bartulis. James van Riemsdyk missed the game, his second in a row, with a lower-body injury that is believed to be a groin strain, which opened the door for Dan Carcillo to remain in the lineup.

Carcillo has been a healthy scratch for 13 games this season, and missed another eight with a sprained medial collateral ligament in his left knee, accounting for nearly half of the Flyers' season.

Among forwards, van Riemsdyk also has been a healthy scratch for four games, Nik Zherdev has sat for five and Andreas Nodl has played in every game in which he was healthy after being benched for four of the Flyers' first six games of the season.

But none of those scratches has had as tangible an impact on the Flyers' success as Carcillo.

The Flyers are 22-4-2 with Carcillo in the lineup and just 11-8-3 without him.

Is that a coincidence, or does Carcillo's nightly regimen of abundant energy have a correlation on the record? Carcillo said he had "no idea," as to why the records shake out like they do when asked about it 2 weeks ago.

Last night, Carcillo scored his third goal of the season just 23 seconds into the second period to give the Flyers a 3-0 lead over Montreal. He also got into a heated battle with Canadiens forward Scott Gomez in the first period after Gomez tripped him and then backhanded the puck in his direction when he was laying on the ice.

"When Danny plays in the lineup, I think he needs to continue to do that," coach Peter Laviolette said. "He played an aggressive game, he's skating well. He was in the game, he was active, and I thought he played a good game."

Carcillo will turn 26 on Friday and is set to become a restricted free agent again this summer.

While some view Carcillo as simply an enforcer type, his skill set - with speed that allows him to get in on the forecheck and hands that allow him to finish when presented with the opportunity - makes him much more than an enforcer. That's why the Flyers decided to avoid arbitration with him last summer and hand him $1.075 million for this season.

Hockey's biggest star, Wayne Gretzky, who helped develop Carcillo in Phoenix over parts of three seasons before he was traded to the Flyers, told the Daily News last month that Carcillo was one of his favorite players to ever coach.

Under Gretzky, Carcillo posted career highs of 13 goals and 11 assists

Carcillo's versatility allows Laviolette to put him on a line with Mike Richards and Nodl, as he did last night, which Laviolette said helps contribute to his success. Playing on any line would allow Carcillo to get lost in the shuffle.

In most cases, the healthy scratch doesn't jump from the press box to the first line.

"It's always a little easier when you're playing with [Richards], not from a personnel standpoint but from a minutes standpoint," Laviolette said. "Mike's line gets out there on a regular basis. At times, based on situations [such as] the power play, penalty kill or matching lines, sometimes the roll of the bench gets a little bit lost. Yet Mike's line seems to find itself out there quite a bit."

Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against Carcillo with a healthy van Riemsdyk and his 12 goals likely trumping him next Tuesday when van Riemsdyk is scheduled to return from his injury. But if Carcillo continues to play like he has, he might start to add pressure on some of his other teammates for spots.

Despite not being chosen as the NBC game of the week on Feb. 13, the Flyers decided to move up the start time of their home game against Los Angeles from 7 o'clock to 3 o'clock. That game will mark Kings assistant coach John Stevens' first return to the Wells Fargo Center since being fired as Flyers coach on Dec. 4, 2009.