FLYERS NEWS

The Flyers faced off with the Washington Capitals this evening in showdown between the top two teams in the Eastern conference. They'll likely have more showdowns later in regular season and perhaps in the postseason before all is said done so this was just the first of the many rounds in this fight. Unfortunately round 1 went to Washington in a hard fought thriller as the Flyers were burned by a questionable boarding penalty, that allowed the Caps to score the winning goal. Before that call the star of the game for the Orange and Black was again Sergei Bobrovsky, who got the somewhat surprising start in goal, despite the fact the Flyers were playing on back to back nights. Bobrovsky reward Peter Laviolette's confidence, with another 36 saves to practically carry his teammates into overtime and salvage at least a point for the 7th straight game. If the Flyers had won Bobrovsky would have tied the Late Pelle Lindbergh's franchise rookie record of 7 consecutive wins, but it just wasn't to be.

Instead penalties, some of them questionable, did the Orange and Black in on this evening. The Flyers actually had the first lead of the game about halfway through the first period, as Andrea Nodl picked up the assist on a Nikolay Zherdev score. Later with just under 3 minutes left in the period, the Flyer's defense, which struggled all night, allowing 39 shots on goal, allowed Eric Fehr to slip one past Bob for a 1-1 tie. Just 4 minutes into the 2nd period Danny Briere, finally back from his suspension, picked up the assist as Ville Leino scored to put the Flyers up 2-1. That might have been enough to win, if not for Leino himself, getting called for a touch high sticking penalty, which opened the door for Alexander Semin to slap in a power play goal to tie it at 2. Thanks mostly to Bob the Flyers managed to hang in there with the game tied at 2, all the way into overtime. It was still tied at 2 with 40 seconds left in OT when Sean O'Donnell was, probably erroneously, called for boarding. That set the stage for Mike Green to beat Bob with 29 seconds left in OT, for a 3-2 win. So the Caps and the officials might have won this one, but we'll get them next time.