Flyers Win Streak Snapped At Four In Shootout Loss To Capitals

The Philadelphia Flyers returned home following a two-game road trip to play host to the Washington Capitals at the Wells Fargo Center.

Following a 3-2 shootout win over the Boston Bruins on Sunday, the Philadelphia Flyers faced another tough opponent in the Washington Capitals on home ice. Both teams entered the game red-hot, as the Flyers were looking for their fifth straight win while the Capitals had won six of their last seven games. Carter Hart got the nod from Head Coach Alain Vigneault and opposed Braden Holtby in-net. Hart, like his team, was looking to extend a winning streak of his own, earning the W in his previous four starts.

The first couple minutes of the game were spent almost entirely in the Flyers zone, as the Capitals put pressure on Hart and possessed a 5-0 shots-on-goal advantage early on in the first. This poor start eventually came back to bite them, as Brendan Leipsic cashed in on some loose change in front of the net to give Washington a 1-0 lead. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Philadelphia struggled to clear the puck out of their zone, leading to a point-shot from John Carlson and the subsequent tally from Leipsic.

Some may blame Hart for not controlling the rebound, but at the end of the day, somebody has to get the puck past the red line, and Philly failed to do so through most of the opening frame. Thankfully, the 21-year-old netminder saved the other 15 shots he saw, keeping his side within one after 20 minutes of action.

Philadelphia certainly put on a better effort in the second, more so towards the end. They out-shot their Metropolitan adversary 12-6, produced three more scoring chances, and had a much higher expected Goals For mark, according to Natural Stat Trick. The only thing they couldn’t do was find the equalizer but came dangerously close in doing so, most notably on a Travis Konecny shot drawing iron shortly after a Flyers power-play expired. Those freaking posts, man…They can be pure evil sometimes. Anyways, Holtby also made a couple of key saves and was one of the reasons the Flyers still found themselves down by one heading into the third.

Claude Giroux would change that early in the period. The Flyers Captain capitalized on a tap-in opportunity set up by a tremendous deke from Jakub Voracek to enter the offensive zone on the power-play to tie things up at one. It was one helluva play from the duo, so let’s take a look at t in all of its’ glory.

THIS IS WHAT WE LIKE TO SEE. Watching G and Jake connect on a play is always fun to watch and it was especially nice to see here as the two came into the game riding two-game pointless droughts. Giroux’s goal and some stellar goaltending from Hart between the pipes pushed this game to extras, where the Capitals won in the shootout thanks to goals from T.J. Oshie and Evgeny Kuznetsov.

The Flyers had zero business walking away with a point tonight, as they played maybe 20-25 minutes of actual good hockey, but extended their streak to seven due to an excellent showing from Hart. The 2016 second-rounder finished the game making 35 saves on 36 shots and committed various robberies to even get his team to overtime. Even though he allowed two tallies in the shootout, you still have to love the poise Hart showed tonight and how well he’s rebounded from a relatively poor month of October.

The Flyers are now 10-5-3 on the year. Next game is Friday against the Ottawa Senators.