Flyers capture 3 points against Lions in 194th derby

It's hard enough if you had a start with only one win out of 5 games, it's hard if your long time leader had to end his injury-prone career at the beginning of the season but probably one of the toughest moments was when the team of the Kloten Flyers was informed by their captain Victor Stancescu this week that he had to retire due to a hip surgery he underwent twelve years ago.

"We closed it up yesterday, Victor didn't want to talk about it anymore, that's his character", Head Coach Sean Simpson explained when asked if ex-Captain Stancescu was mentioned in the locker room before the game.

And if that wasn't enough, the Flyers faced the ZSC Lions, last years finalist. The Lions had won 5 out of 6 games last season and dominated Kloten.

Denis Hollenstein was given the job of the captaincy while Michael Liniger and Matthias Bieber are the assistant captains.

In the 194th derby the Flyers had the better start, Liniger took the pass from Kolarik who passed the puck from behind the goal and beat Niklas Schlegel 4 who stood between the pipes for injured number one goalie Lukas Flüeler.

In the past few games, the Flyers would have somehow folded, let the opponent dominate them but for now, the guest kept on pushing and fighting for the puck. There were fewer individual mishaps than usual. In the 16th minute Robin Leone stood on the right side of the goal, received a pass from Santala and and put up a wrap-around to beat Schlegel the second time tonight.

It wasn't until the 24th minute when the Flyers had a power play opportunity but turned over the puck and suddenly faced a a two on one situation. Goalie Gerber thought he had the situation under control but in the end had to pick the puck from behind the goal line as Ryan Keller scored shorthanded.

The second chance for a power play came in the 36th minute, Kloten passed around the puck fast but couldn't create any shots on Schlegel. The Lions were back at full strength when Santala took a shot at the goaltender. The puck deflected and von Gunten was ready to take on the rebound and beat the goalie a third time tonight.

All of a sudden the Lions were awake, put the pressure on the Flyers defense, at times it looked like a 5 on 5 power play. With just a minute left in the Lions got their first man advantage but couldn't capitalize in the remaining seconds.

The first minute of the lats period wasn't over and goalie Gerber didn't look good when he let a shot by Ryan Shannon pass. And now the Flyers were under pressure once more, Patrick Obrist was benched for tripping but this time Kloten's boxplay was able to keep the puck out of the shooting zone.

With less than 9 minutes left in the game, the Flyers were on a 3 on 2 attack when Denis Hollenstein laid back the puck for Tommi Santala who then had no problems to score the 4th goal with a hard slapshot from between the face-off circles.

16 seconds, that's how long it took the Lions to score on the third power play chance with 6 minutes left. Bärtschi scored while Matthews had his second assist of the evening. Goalie Schlegel left the goal with a minute remaining but the 6th attacker wasn't enough to score the equalizer in this game and so the Flyers took the 3 points back home.

"We needed a reaction to last week, the team wasn't happy but we trained really well during the week, we had a game plan tonight, it worked well but we have to build on that". Simpson was very clear on what he expects, he didn't want his team to "jump over the moon" just because they won in the Hallenstadion for the first time in almost 2 years.  Kloten will face champion Davos at home tonight.

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