The Battle of Pennsylvania, a rivalry that was taken to new heights last night at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
When the Flyers and Penguins face-off, you know what you are going to get. But, yet every time, a new wrinkle somewhere works its way into each game.
Last time, in their first meeting of the 2025-26 season, it took 60+ minutes for the newest wrinkle.
With the scored tied 2-2 after regulation, the Flyers and Penguins needed overtime to decide the game, which was just the beginning of it.
During the five-minute overtime period, both teams failed to score on the power-play and had goals called back.
The Penguins initially thought Evgeni Malkin won the game on a delayed penalty call. The goal was called back for an illegal substitution as Penguins goalie Arturs Silovs wasn’t even at the red line when Malkin fired it past Samuel Ersson.
The Flyers thought Tyson Foerster won the game on the powerplay. His goal was called back for offsides on the entry into the zone, which Foerster mouthed to his teammates as they came to celebrate.
“It was a weird overtime,” head coach Rick Tocchet told reporters postgame. “I’ve never had it in a long time, two goals called back.”
Then the fun started.
After the horn blew to take the game to a shootout, a huge scrum broke out in-front of the Flyers bench.
Punches were thrown, players were tackled to the ice, it lasted a good five minutes before the referee’s separated the two teams. The referees then took their time to figure out all the penalties from the scrum.
As a result, 80 penalty minutes were given out. Each player apart of the scrum received a 10-minute misconduct and were ejected from the game.
Two players who excel in the shootout, Sidney Crosby and Trevor Zegras, were two of the eight players ejected and could not participate in the shootout.
“Emotions were high,” Bobby Brink told reporters postgame. “Score a goal there in OT that gets called off. It was a hard-fought effort all game and it kind of boiled over at the end there.”
After all of that, the Flyers went on to win 3-2 (2-1 in the shootout).
It was a game that you just had to see to believe.
PHOTO CREDIT: Bruce Bennett – Getty Images
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