Flyers again can’t seal the deal as Penguins triumph

By Frank Seravalli / Philadelphia Daily News


PITTSBURGH — Drenched and dragging, the Flyers left the ice on Friday night with nothing left in the tank after a furious push in which they tried to end the Pittsburgh Penguins’ season.

With a sea of white towels cheering their exit, the Flyers, who outshot and outchanced Pittsburgh by a healthy margin in the third period, left behind a rambunctious crowd as the series heads back to Philadelphia for Game 6 on Sunday at noon.

Pittsburgh’s Jordan Staal and Tyler Kennedy went top shelf on goalie Ilya Bryzgalov just three minutes apart in the second period, and the Flyers were thwarted by goalie Marc-Andre Fleury’s newfound brilliance in the final period in a 3-2 loss at Consol Energy Center in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.



With each additional momentum-sealing save, the chants of "Fleu-ry, Fleu-ry" grew louder and louder, swelling almost to the level of the Penguins’ clear-cut confidence as the Flyers head back to Philadelphia with only a 3-2 series lead.

Penguins center Matt Cooke called it Fleury’s most impressive game of the season.

"That’s the best he’s been this year, for sure," Cook said. "He’s played great for us all year and he’s our guy, and with some of the quirky, weird things that have happened up to this point in the playoffs, we never lost faith in him — and he proved why tonight."

"I don’t know if it’s a scary thing, but Fleury played well tonight," Flyers left wing Scott Hartnell said. "Looks like he’s getting hot, so it’s going to be that much harder."

For the second game in a row, the Flyers’ only offensive production came from the power play. They have not scored an even strength goal in 139 minutes and 33 seconds, back to the third period of Game 3 in Philadelphia.

"We’re up, 3-0, and you think we’d have momentum," said Flyers forward James van Riemsdyk, who played for the first time after missing 23 games. "Next game they come out and do that. So you just take it game by game."

Ilya Bryzgalov was neither the hero nor the goat in Game 5.

The Flyers have tied a franchise record for power-play goals in a single playoff series with their 10th and 11th of the series in Friday night’s first period alone. They are 11-for-18 in the series (61 percent). They also had 11 in the 1989 Division Finals against Pittsburgh, a series they won in seven games.

Put in perspective, the Flyers now have 11 power play goals in five games. Boston had 10 in their entire run to a Stanley Cup last spring.

The Bruins [team stats], instead, did their dirty work at even-strength, outmuscling and outworking opponents. The Flyers left their best opportunities to a singular man-advantage in the third period.

The statistics and the records sound sweet, but they aren’t enough to win a series single-handedly.

Friday night marked just the eighth time in 22 tries the Flyers have not closed out a series in Game 5 while sporting a 3-1 series lead.

Now, as the asterisk is removed from another date remaining on the series schedule, the Flyers’ odds of moving on to the second round get hairier and hairier. The Flyers are still 17-2 in the series when leading, 3-2, heading into Game 6, but they have gone to a deciding, and nail-biting, Game 7 eight times in 19 tries. That is a significant number.

On Friday, all started well for the Flyers for the second straight game. They captured the lead when Matt Carle’s snapper from the point beat Fleury with 8:15 left in the first period.

As has been the case all series for both teams, the Flyers’ lead didn’t last long, just 3:06.

Hartnell, the Flyers’ leading goal scorer from the regular season, netted his first of the playoffs to give the Flyers a 2-1 edge heading to the locker room.

"We’ve got to take the positives out of this loss," Hartnell said. "We’ve got to bear down on our chances."

But the game was turned in another three-minute segment in the second period when Staal and Kennedy scored in a span of 3:38.

All of the things that made the Flyers so successful in jumping out to that lopsided series lead — the power play, the comebacks — are catching up to them. Pittsburgh will fly to Philadelphia with all the momentum, and that makes for a few sleepless nights for the once seemingly invincible Flyers.