Flyers Embarrassed In 6-1 Loss To Caps On Ed Snider Tribute Night
By Joseph Santoliquito
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The surge lasted for about a minute. It was emphatic, inspirational, defiant, the way the late, great Ed Snider would have wanted it. Within the first 57 seconds of the game, the Flyers had their first lead in this best-of-seven first-round NHL playoff series with the top-seeded Washington Capitals.
Then reality set in.
Despite the memory of Snider being honored in a well-done pregame montage by the Flyers, their emotional muscle was only able to last so long.
After Michael Raffl put the Flyers up less than a minute into the game, the Caps weathered the Flyers' storm and followed with four unanswered goals to win easily, 6-1, at the Wells Fargo Center Monday night.
A series sweep seems a foregone conclusion when the teams meet again for Game 4 on Wednesday, back at the Wells Fargo Center.
Besides holding the vastly superior edge in talent, what was somehow missed Monday night is that the Flyers may be on an impossible mission in memory of their owner, the Caps were given a preseason edict that's ruled them like an iron claw—and that's to win the Stanley Cup and avert another playoff collapse.
So far, Washington appears to be upholding expectations.
After Raffl scored, the Caps followed with six unanswered goals from Marcus Johansson, Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson, Jay Beagle and pair of goals from superstar Alex Ovechkin.
Things took a very ugly turn when the Flyers' Pierre-Edouard Bellemare slammed Dmitry Orlov into the boards with 7:43 to play. Orlov was down for several minutes, and Bellemare actually stood over him, as if to say he didn't mean to slam him like that. But that didn't stop a minor riot from igniting. The Flyers' Ryan White was in the mix, while Radko Gudas was pounding on Andre Burakovsky.
The Caps' Justin Williams was trying to get at White, when he was headlocked from behind by the Flyers' Brandon Manning.
By the time Ovechkin scored his second goal, the tired Flyers seemed to have quit.
The Flyers, through three games, have scored a measly two goals. They were booed off the ice as the final horn sounded. And no one has seemed to be able to find the Flyers' missing top line of Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek and Wayne Simmonds.
On a night the Flyers intended to honor Ed Snider, they proceeded to do everything the late Flyers' owner gnashed his teeth over.
An emotional lift ended with an embarrassing epitaph: 6-1.
