The Flyers' Stars Cost Them

Let's start off by addressing the fact that the Capitals are much better than the Flyers. Everyone outside of Philadelphia knows it and last night proved to some in the city that that is the case. The Flyers can hang, for sure, but Washington didn't win the Presidents' Trophy by accident. The Capitals have more skill players (including the best goal scorer in the world), more experienced players, and better goaltending. The better goaltending isn't a knock on Steve Mason because Mason played well last night but Holtby has been and was on another level. And the guys who should lead the Flyers either didn't show up or did more harm than good.

Losing Sean Couturier was a major blow for the series but the game was still winnable last night before two of the top players on the team made giant mental errors. Wayne Simmonds made a bone headed decision. He fell right into Tom Wilson's, an irrelevant fourth liner's, trap. Wilson had set up a Flyers power play late in the game that could have led to the Flyers tying the game at one but instead resulted in offsetting minors and fighting majors and led to an opposite swing in momentum back to Washington. Should Simmonds have gotten an extra minor for roughing? Probably not. Should the top goal scorer check himself out of the game due to a fighting major with less than seven minutes left and down a goal? Absolutely not. This wasn't game 43 of the regular season. This was game one of the first round of the playoffs. There is not one reason that Simmonds should have done more than tell Wilson to watch his back especially because the hit wasn't nearly as big as some of the other ones in a very physical game. If Ryan White wants to drop them with Wilson, more power to him because that trade off is arbitrary, but losing Simmonds and taking Wilson off the ice, a guy who would have seen a maximum of one more shift at that point in the game cost the Flyers any chance they had left. I love Wayne but he cost the Flyers a chance at a game one, come from behind victory. The lesser of the mistakes was Jake Voracek turning the puck over which ultimately led to the Capitals second, game clinching goal. He is not the player he used to be this year and he tried to take matters into his own hands. Rather than chip and chase, he chose to try and skate through a sturdy defenseman and it led to an odd man rush and a goal. That cannot happen. Finally, the captain Claude Giroux was silent. He disappeared last night. You can credit that to the matchup problems he had but he still has to play better if he wants his team to win games.

The game shifted significantly towards the Capitals after the first period but you could feel a Flyers push with about ten minutes left in the third. That all went away when Simmonds decided to be a hero and get sent off with the worst player on the Capitals. No reason for it and he has to know it as every logical hockey fan should.