That makes this weekend’s final two games against Pittsburgh and Carolina quite important. The Flyers find themselves in a dead heat with both Wild Card teams – Detroit and Columbus – as all three teams have 91 points.Ĭurrently, the Flyers hold the tiebreaker over both teams, but need to keep winning to prevent themselves from falling to that bottom spot that would draw the big, bad Bruins in the first round. The Flyers will have to find a way to finish if they want to avoid a first round matchup with the Boston Bruins. “The first five minutes we turned the puck over a couple times and they got a goal there. “I thought we were up today and competed real hard,” Berube said. It had to be a frustrating night for the Flyers, who controlled the play for a good portion of the game. Hartnell took a tripping penalty late in the third period, which led to the insurance marker by Steven Stamkos on a tough angle shot. “It’s mistakes here and there,” Craig Berube said in a televised interview. Later, Downie lost track of his man – defenseman Eric Brewer – and Brewer was able to get the puck on his stick in a high percentage area and beat Ray Emery. It was a rough night for both Steve Downie and Scott Hartnell, both of whom combined for the three errors that led to three Lightning goals.ĭownie made a low percentage pass in the neutral zone across the ice that became an odd man rush for Tampa and eventually a goal by Tyler Johnson. The kinds of mistakes the Flyers weren’t making for a large portion of the season – at least not all in the same game. The part of their game that wasn’t there was what Simmonds described as “bonehead plays.”Īll four Tampa goals were the result of mistakes. He was pulling saves out of his butt there.” Simmonds scored a power play goal in the game. “We had tons of chances,” said Wayne Simmonds in a televised interview. He was out of position and still made big saves – or had his teammates making saves for him as defenseman Radko Gudas did twice. The Tampa goalie was diving all over the place. Anders Lindback looked like Dominik Hasek. Nevertheless, this game was there for the Flyers. Not that the Flyers haven’t done things the hard way all season… Losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-2 Thursday assured that and now the Flyers will haaavvve to approach the playoffs the hard way – starting on the road in New York, Pittsburgh or Boston. The second goal was getting home ice advantage in the first round….

Steve downie twitter