The Philadelphia Flyers let a two-goal lead slip through their gloves on Thursday night in Boston.
Heading into the third period, the Flyers were up 2-0 on the strength of a two-goal second period.
James van Riemsdyk and Claude Giroux scored in the middle frame.
Philadelphia relaxed a bit in the third period and the Bruins responded with four goals before van Riemsdyk scored his second of the game to force extra time and eventually the skills competition.
In the end, Jake DeBrusk scored the only goal on penalties sending the Bruins to a 5-4 victory.
“It was great to see them respond,” Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I mean, it’s in the room. What was addressed after the second period was essentially we’re too easy to play against offensively. We’re a hard team to play against defensively, I think we’re willing to play the right way, but offensively, we were too easy to play against. So we discussed the couple of ways we can get better, be harder to play against and maybe in a little more forceful manner, so hopefully the message gets across.”
Tuukka Rask made 22 saves in the win.
“We should have put the game away in overtime,” Jakub Voracek said. “We had three or four Grade A chances. Unfortunately, Rask stopped them. And obviously shootout is shootout.”
The Flyers’ best chances came off a series of shots from Voracek and Kevin Hayes in the extra session.
“The first one, I mean, I saw Voracek was all by himself in the front of the net,” Rask said. “The [defenseman] (Travis Sanheim) kind of shot a floater in there. [Voracek] made a good play just trying to tip it in my five-hole, and the rebound was lying there, so I just tried to get extended as much as possible, and I think it happened to hit my glove there.
“And then the second one, you see that develop. The guy was kind of slowing it down on the wing, and [Hayes] was driving the net wide and made a good play, but I just happened to extend my leg there.”
Boston got the rally going when Jack Studnicka scored with 57 seconds gone in the third.
“It’s obviously a very exciting night for myself,” Studnicka said. “Great to get the win, so that adds on to that.”
Charlie Coyle got the game even at 2-2 with a goal at 2:05.
Travis Sanheim restored the Flyers’ lead before the Bruins replied with two more goals.
Nick Ritchie struck off the Boston power play for a 3-3 tie and Brandon Carlo put the Bruins back up 4-3 before van Riemsdyk forced the extra session.
Carter Hart made 39 saves in the loss.
“You know what, I knew it was going to be a hard game,” Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault said. “The Bruins, they were the best in the NHL in the regular season last year, and they got a great team. They hadn’t scored a lot, I knew that they’d come at us hard, they did. We were up 2-0 after two periods, they had a strong push. There were some moments in this game that I really liked. I liked the fact that our power play at a critical time scored a goal, enabled us to get a point.”
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