April 19, 2016
Matt Slocum/AP
Philadelphia Flyers forward Chris VandeVelde, head coach Dave Hakstol, captain Claude Giroux and forwards Wayne Simmonds and Jakub Voracek watch from the bench during the final seconds of Game 3.
What was supposed to be a memorable memorial tribute to the late Flyers chairman Ed Snider turned ugly on Monday night when the Washington Capitals ran the home team out of its own building.
By the ugly end, the Caps took a three games to none lead in the series by drilling five power-play goals past goalie Steve Mason and then grinned while performing a dismissive dance on the Flyers expiring playoff hopes. It all ended while the Flyers exhausted penalty killers were run ragged and the fans reacted with a shower of white bracelets thrown from the stands.
The bracelets had been given to each fan to make them part of the brilliant pre-game ceremony to memorialize Snider. Instead, the Flyers got smoked and a portion of the fans decided to react by throwing the white bracelets on the ice.
It was embarrassing, but in hockey terms the real embarrassment took place on the ice, where the Flyers showed the wear and tear of their late-season grind just to get in the playoffs.
Again, the Flyers were tossed aside because of the Flyers inability to match the Capitals on power plays.
From the beginning, they had little chance to knock off the Caps, but the demand of any fanbase is that even in defeat, the team has to be hard to beat.
The entire series has pivoted on power plays. The Flyers could not take advantage of early power plays in the first two games of the series in Washington, while the Caps scored two power play goals in the second game to go up in the series 2 games to none.
The Flyers zero-for-the-power play continued on Monday night, and that failure was magnified because the Capitals were putting on a clinic in how to run a power play. It was a matter of no contest, and that is what was most disturbing.
Flyers coach Dave Hakstol has to take some heat for his team’s inability to adjust and improve in those areas. Hakstol has watched his penalty killers sit back and wait for the Caps' superior talent to take over the series. On the flip side, Hakstol has watched his own power play fail because players such as Claude Giroux and Shayne Gostisbehere are out of gas, and the first unit with Jake Voracek and Wayne Simmonds is totally ineffective.
There is no getting around the simple fact of the matter: the Washington Capitals are a much better hockey team. From the goal on out, they are far superior to the Flyers.
That should come as no surprise.
Goalie Braden Holtby wrote himself into the NHL record book with 48 victories and Alex Ovechkin hit the 50-goal plateau to further enhance his status of his generation’s greatest goal scorer.
The problem is that the Flyers' performance late in the game on Monday night was not up to NHL standards.
Especially in the playoffs, NHL teams are rarely snubbed the way the Flyers were treated, and it was alarming to see it happen. The sight of the Capitals power play running circles around the Flyers was as embarrassing as anything local fans have seen all season.
In the first two games – and the first two periods of game three – the Flyers were pretty much level with the Caps on five-on-five, but Washington wasn't playing anywhere near their top gear.
That gear was hit in Philadelphia when the Flyers handed them a drag strip on which to run their power play.
There is a brighter future for the Flyers after this season, and you can make an argument that the team stripped all its gears during the crazy late-season run. In essence, the last month of the season was the Flyers playoff season.
However, the Flyers owe it to the fans and mostly to themselves to turn up their effort in what is left of this series, and not go easily into the end of their season.
