Flyers rally past Avalanche, keep pace in wild-card race

DENVER - The Flyers' Mile High low ended Thursday night at the Pepsi Center.

Claude Giroux and Radko Gudas scored 19 seconds apart late in the game, lifting the Flyers to a dramatic 4-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche.

Giroux gathered a rebound of a Wayne Simmionds shot, made a deft move, and scored for the third straight game to put the Flyers ahead, 3-2, with 5 minutes, 24 seconds remaining in regulation.

"It was pretty fun to score that goal, and as I was waiting for my teammates, all I could see in the crowd was orange," Giroux said. "There were a lot of Flyers fans there and that made it pretty special."

Ryan White was credited with an empty-net goal to ice the gritty comeback victory.

It was the Flyers' first win at the Pepsi Center since 2002, ending a seven-game losing streak (0-4-3) at the arena.

Nineteen seconds before Giroux's goal, defenseman Gudas scored on a point drive to tie the game at 2-2 with 5:43 left. Gudas has five goals in the last 10 games - after not scoring in the season's first 57 games.

Jake Voracek, promoted to the second line Thursday, set a screen on Gudas' goal.

"Not only do we get to steal a game from someone - it feels like it's always happening to us - but it's a huge win for us," Shayne Gostisbehere said. "We had a lot of shots and we played good team hockey over the last two periods."

John Mitchell scored from out front with 13:47 left to give the Avalanche a 2-1 lead. Mitchell got position on Gostisbehere and redirected Andreas Martinsen's crossing pass past Steve Mason.

The Flyers are tied with Detroit for the Eastern Conference's final wild-card spot, but they technically are ahead of the Red Wings because they have a game in hand.

Colorado fell two points behind Minnesota for the last wild-card spot in the Western Conference.

Two nights earlier, the Flyers blew a 2-0 lead in the final 64 seconds of regulation and lost to Columbus in a shootout, 3-2.

But after a sluggish first period Thursday, they responded and dominated the last two periods, giving then a 10-2-2 record in their last 14 games.

For the first 25 minutes, the Flyers looked fatigued from playing four games in six nights, but they found energy and finally started to put offensive pressure on goalie Semyon Varlamov.

Lots of pressure.

"I think we woke up," center Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said.

"We got our legs, we got our wind, and figured it out a little bit," Gostisbehere said. "They weren't too overly defensive . . . so we had a good game plan to go East-West, get it up top, and get some shots through and we did a great job over the last two periods."

The Flyers outshot the Avs, 37-19, in the final 40 minutes.

The pressure produced the equalizer on Bellemare's tip in of Gostisbehere's point drive, tying the game at 1-1 with 7:24 left in the second period.

The Avalanche had taken a 1-0 lead when Mikhail Grigorenko's follow-up shot bounced off the skate of defenseman Nick Holden and got past Steve Mason (32 saves) with 16:55 to play in the second.

"It was almost as if their goal sparked us," Mason said.

Mason, coming off a career-high 51-save performance in a 3-2 shootout loss in Columbus on Tuesday, kept the Flyers in the game with an outstanding first period. The Flyers were outshot in the stanza, 15-7.

Colorado was without injured forwards Matt Duchene and Nathan MacKinnon, its two leading scorers. Duchene had two goals as the Avs routed the Flyers on Nov. 10, 4-0, at the Wells Fargo Center.

The Flyers have been playing like a different team lately, entering the night 9-2-2 since Feb. 25. In that span, they were tied for the most Eastern Conference points, second in wins, second in goals, and fourth in goals allowed.

That enabled them to climb past Carolina, New Jersey, Ottawa, and Detroit and hold the second wild-card spot before Thursday's action.

"Every game is the playoffs. This is the playoffs," said Bellemare, whose team has nine games remaining. "They don't call this the playoff push for nothing. Every single game is important. Every single shift is important."

scarchidi@phillynews.com

@BroadStBull