And now it's official. The Flyers death march concluded last night, in a game that looked pretty much like the previous 3. I'll save my broader comments on the season for another post, but it was disappointing to see the Flyers fall so flatly this round.
I always had deep doubts about the transferability of the Penguins result. As I have said previously, that was a series of passion and the Flyers should simply forget it ever happened. The Penguins are a better team than the Devils, but the Penguins-Flyers series was a rivalry that created a unique series that was an exception to what was happening around the league.
While a letdown is not surprising, an effective collapse by the Flyers was. Twice in six regular season meetings the Devils handily controlled the Flyers, but to do it 4 times in a row? I did not imagine that could happen.
It's most disappointing to me that the Flyers completely failed to adjust to the Devils game plan. By game 5, they clearly had no ideas, and the Devils continued to own the puck, control the center of the ice, and dominate on the boards. At this point, I'm not sure how blame much falls on the players, and how much falls on the coaches.
The Devils forecheck continued to bedevil the Flyers (har har har), but the domination went beyond that. For instance, the Flyers PP, which utterly demolished the Penguins, was 3/19 against the Devils. That has nothing to do with the Devils even strength forecheck. Furthermore, in this series with a 3rd period lead, the Devils would change their forecheck and play more of a trap. The Flyers could not beat that either, as evidenced by their feeble 3rd period effort last night with their season on the line and nothing to lose.
At least with the Flyers out, I am free to cancel cable for the summer...
Notes:
-Spare me the finger pointing at Bryzgalov. There is no defending the game winning goal last night, but on the whole, he was the Flyers best player this series by a large margin. He didn't singlehandedly win a game, but the Devils were the far superior team in games 2 and 4 and Bryz played excellent games to keep the result in doubt until the 3rd period.
I'm pretty sure all hockey writers have a pre-written template for an article "Goaltending Fails the Flyers Again" with blank spaces for the name of the goalie. Those articles will pop up again. Ignore them. And before you say good goalies simply don't do what Bryz did last night, consider that Brodeur directly caused a goal in game 1 by passing the puck right up the center of the ice where Schenn intercepted it, and again turned over the puck to Schenn last night while still behind the goal, but Briere hit the post on a wide open net. The only difference between Bryzgalov's turnover and Brodeur's last night was luck.
-Rinaldo instantly made his presence felt this game, sparking the Flyers physical game early with a devastating hit on Volchenkov. As the game carried on, Rinaldo became irrelevant however, and he took a bad penalty.
-Another disappointing night for JVR, topped off with a particularly bad sequence. He had the puck with time and space behind the Devils net, but was stripped of the puck, and took a terrible offensive zone penalty while trying to backcheck. Kovalchuck would ice the series 4 seconds into that PP.
-Good for Talbot last night, as he was one of the few flyers that was johnny-on-the-spot on the puck, and his forechecking in the corner started a sequence of events that he would also finish to score the game's first goal.
-The team that scored first was 0-5 this series. The team that scored first was 1-5 last series. Hard to believe...
-Brief playoff performance recaps;
-Thumbs up: Briere (8 goals and 13 points), Giroux (17 points), Voracek (10 points), Schenn (9 points), Talbot (6 points, best +/- on team), Couturier, Coburn (played huge minutes), Grossmann (until getting injured), Gustafsson
-Thumbs down: Carle, Simmonds, Read (didn't get much ice time), JVR, Kubina (injured? either way wasn't there for the team)
-Meh: Hartnell (injured?), Jagr (injured?), Timonen (injured?), Bryzgalov, Lilja, Wellwood, Rinaldo
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