PHILADELPHIA, PA – The Philadelphia Flyers came back from an early 3-0 hole in Game 5 with the Buffalo Sabres but Tyler Ennis scored 5:31 into overtime to give the Sabres a 4-3 win and a 3-2 series lead heading back to Buffalo Sunday for Game 6 Sunday afternoon.
Mike Weber’s slapshot from the left point was stopped by Michael Leighton, who came on for starting goaltender Brian Boucher in the first period, but the rebound came out to Ennis who was just outside the crease to the left of Boucher and slammed home to give Buffalo the win.
The Flyers power play once again had a power outage going 0-5. The Sabres went 1-3 and won 55% of the face-offs. Ryan Miller made 36 saves on 36 shots while Leighton had 20 saves on 21 shots. Boucher had only 8 saves on 11 shots in 15:36 worth of ice time.
Ennis scored the first goal of the game as well on the first of two extremely bad goals allowed by Boucher. Ennis, to the right of Boucher, fired a shot that hit the left leg pad as Boucher was poorly positioned in net and with his pads opened up. To make matters worse Thomas Vanek scored the same way, only this time it was to the left of Boucher and 3:51 into the game the Flyers were already in a 2-0 hole thanks to their poor goaltending.
The Sabres put a ton of pressure on the Flyers net the rest of the period and things only got worse for the Flyers when Marc-Andre scored on the power play for a 3-0 Sabres lead and officially ending Boucher’s night.
The Flyers came out storming the rest of the game and eventually got goals from James Van Riemsdyk, Andrej Meszaros, and Danny Briere to tie the game at 3-3.
After the game both coaches gave their take on the game.
“In the second period I thought that everybody looked strong,” said Flyers Head Coach Peter Laviolette. “We had our best period of the night. We were hard-charging, trying to fight back in. We felt like if we could win that period, we could win the game. The guys did a really good job at unloading the tanks and getting back in.”
“I have a tremendous amount of confidence in the group in that room,” said Flyers head coach Peter Laviolette. “At no point did I think we were going to lose the game tonight. Yet, we did. We are going back to Buffalo and we needed to win this next game anyway so nothing changes for us. We have to go Buffalo and win, period.”
Needless to say, Boucher felt responsible for the loss and took it very hard.
“The first one I was anticipating a pass and he shot it on net. The second one, aside from maybe coming out and playing the puck before that, I don’t know if I would’ve played that any differently. I mean, the guy banked it off me. But the first one was me anticipating a pass and he threw it on net. I take full responsibility for it. I put my team behind the eight-ball. It was on me. Those are goals that can’t go in.”
Contact the author at Brian.Jennings@prohockeynews.com
Contact the photographer at Lewis.Bleiman@prohockeynews.com
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