PHILADELPHIA – The Flyers held a 3-2 lead over the Washington Capitals late in the period on Thursday night.
In less than two minutes, Garnet Hathaway hit for a double and erased the deficit to help send the Caps to a 5-3 win.
“I think if you look at the string of games we’ve been having lately, it’s a special one,” Hathaway said. “We’ve a break between games, we’ve got a week between games right now, and we wanted to come out and have a game that we could look back on during the break and say, ‘That was great. Lets continue to build off that.’ And up until the third, I don’t think we were happy with it.”
Ilya Samsonov made 30 saves in the Washington win.
Gerry Mayhew struck for a pair of goals for the Flyers, and Travis Sanheim added a single marker in the loss.
“The second period wasn’t good, we didn’t generate anything, we didn’t bring anything to the net, we had no attack to our game,” Washington head coach Peter Laviolette said. “I thought we were better in the third period. … We were able to put some pressure on at the end and score some goals.”
Washington improved to 28-15-9.
“We’ve been playing really well lately,” Hathaway said. “And that goes into ‘Hags” speed and turnovers, and ‘Dowder’s’ been unbelievable on the draws. I think we’re controlling the puck a little bit more down low and you’re seeing, with cutbacks or puck possession … we had a lot more movement in the offensive zone, rather than just getting it, being stationary and throwing the puck away. I think we’re starting to make plays. We’re being a little more aggressive, I guess, to try and attack the net.”
Michal Kempny and Joe Snively also scored for the Caps.
“I just try to get to the net where the pucks are,” Mayhew said. “That second goal I scored was a great play by [Sanheim]. When you go to the net good things happen, so I am going to try to continue to do that.”
Philadelphia dropped to 15-25-9.
“We played 57 minutes the way we did,” Philadelphia coach Mike Yeo said. “You leave the game feeling that way, that’s pretty tough.”
John Carlson added an empty-net goal for the final.
Martin Jones made 20 saves in the Flyers loss.
“We just have some breakdowns late in the game,” Jones said. “It’s frustrating because we did a lot of the right things during the course of the game. I thought we played them really well. They’re a good team, they’re going to have a push, but I think as a group we can do a better job of managing that.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.