In Toronto, the Philadelphia Flues’ Brian Elliott made 16 saves Philadelphia beat the Washington Capitals, 3-1, on Thursday.
“I think it’s just important to play the right way and keep building on this momentum we’re gaining right now,” Flyers center Sean Couturier said. “Yeah, we want to win, we want to finish with the highest possible seed, but as long as we’re at our best once the real playoffs start, that’s the biggest thing.”
Travis Boyd had the only goal against Elliot.
“It’s not a secret, we have a different level of play and we need to get to it if we want to have success,” Capitals coach Todd Reirden said. “We need more from everybody.”
Scott Laughton struck twice and Travis Sanheim scored to give the Flyers a 3-0 lead.
“We had a really good training camp in Philly, the guys are confident in each other and we have a lot of guys that work really, really hard,” Laughton said. “It’s easy to try and execute when you have guys moving their feet, staying over top of teams and making it hard on them. We’ve picked up from our camp and continue to grow our game. We need to continue to do that.”
The Flyers will meet the Tampa Bay Lightning onj Saturday for the top seed in the eastern conference.
“I think the hardest thing when you come from a big break, kind of playing summer hockey if you will, is offense is pretty easy when you’re playing shinny and no one’s really playing for real, and you get out here and it’s a lot harder,” the Capitals’ T.J. Oshie said. “You’ve got to work a lot harder to score goals. You’ve got to work harder to get in position to score goals. Things happen a lot faster. So we definitely need more offense. If not goals, then at least chances and momentum from the top six here.”
[WATCH: All Capitals vs. Flyers highlights]
Braden Holtby made 18 saves in the loss.
“The point of these games is obviously for the seeding, but for us personally, we need to get our game where we need it to be,” Oshie said. “We need to use these games and put ourselves in situations mentally to figure out how to be mentally strong out there, how to get our game to a certain level. Definitely it’s harder to do that when you can lose three and you’re still in the playoffs. But I think we just have to do a better job of getting our game to that next level. Luckily we’ve got one more to try to do that.”
The Caps will face the Boston Bruins on Sunday for the third seed in the Eastern conference.
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