Flyers squander early lead, fall to lowly Senators

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Saturday, February 26, 2011
Posted: 9:44 p.m.Updated: 10:40 p.m.

By Tim Panaccio
CSNPhilly.com
BOX SCORE
OTTAWAYou could not have quit on a game any finer than the Flyers did Saturday night at Scotiabank Place.

After a dominant opening period where the Flyers could have scored four or five goals, yet had to settle for one, they simply folded their tents.

A lackluster effort on our part, said goalie Brian Boucher, following a 4-1 butt-kicking by the Senators. We stopped playing and they got some goals. It felt like two different games. It certainly seemed the Senators werent interested in playing the first half of the game.

Maybe it would have been more advantageous for us to get up by a couple goals and really take the wind out of their sails. But we let them hang around. Thats what happens when you let teams hang around. They get a goal or two and they got life.

Peter Laviolette preaches all the time that every team in the National Hockey League is created equal. Even dregs like the Senators.

Cory Cloustons Senators are dead last in the Eastern Conference. They had just 49 points entering Saturday night. Only the lowly Edmonton Oilers had fewer (48).

Dont take the Sens seriously and it doesnt matter if youre the best team in the East. Youll get burned.

Ottawa led 2-1 going into the third period and then Chris Phillips, playing what might have been his last game as a Senator, ripped one from the blue line at 11:15 to ice it.

Truth is, the Flyers had already packed their bags when the first period ended.

A very poor game by everyone, Scott Hartnell said. We have a few days off to think about it, which makes it worse.

The changeover has begun here in Ottawa under general manager Bryan Murray. Eight of the players in the lineup that faced the Flyers spent most of this season in the AHL at Binghamton.

Those kids ran circles around the Flyers.

Asked to explain the loss, Laviolette said he couldnt.

We were clearly outworked for 40 minutes, he said.

But they werent in the first period.

The Senators went a full 12:01 between shots in the first. Ryan Shannon got a shot just 2:09 in the game. The next one came from Phillips. In between, Boucher was able to brush up on his Russian so he can better communicate with Sergei Bobrovsky at their locker stalls.

Despite two power plays in which Sens goalie Craig Anderson was repeatedly tested, it was a scoreless game with the Flyers outshooting Ottawa 10-3 at one point.

The Flyers were 0-for-4 in the game with the man advantage. The power play has been stagnant for a long time now and that could haunt this team in the playoffs.

Our power play has to be better, Hartnell said. We were dumping pucks in and not recovering the dumps. It seemed like we were in the neutral zone more than the offensive zone and not getting shots. We werent going to the hard areas.

The only Flyers goal came in the final 20 seconds of the first period. Claude Giroux laid a beauty of a pass off the left boards. Skating hard, Hartnell caught it in stride and whirled around slow-footed defenseman Erik Karlsson into the Ottawa end.

With Anderson braced for a shot, Hartnell fired from inside the circle high under the crossbar, giving the Flyers a 1-0 lead at intermission. Thats 19 goals for Hartnell.

Giroux had the puck in our own zone right in the middle and he yelled at me to skate, skate, skate, then I realized he was going to chip the puck to me, Hartnell said. It was good to get some speed on the guy, and I wanted to get a shot on net and I was able to beat him upstairs.

Incidentally, Nikolay Zherdev, rescued by the Flyers after clearing waivers, had a breakaway attempt on his first shift of the game that Anderson stoned. Zherdev hustled in this game, playing 16:48third highest ice time of the season.

I thought he tried, tried to skate hard, Laviolette said.

Because the Flyers couldnt put Ottawa away early, the Sens sensed they could steal two points. They outworked the Flyers over the final 40 minutes of play.

It began in the second period as the Senators finally got on the board during a power play with just their ninth shot of the game. Nick Foligno walked around Mike Richards and just muscled a puck past Boucher at 12:18 to tie the game.

Four minutes later, the tandem of rookie Erik Condra and Ryan Shannon had the Briere line chasing its tail behind the Flyers net with the former beating Boucher as the Sens forged ahead, 2-1. Condra had two goals in the game.

The only thing we can take out of this is every team is good, Ville Leino said. You cant take any team lightly. Give them a one-goal or two-goal lead and its tough to get back in it. Everybody can beat everybody on any day.

Laviolette changed his lines around for the final two periods but that didnt work, either.

I feel bad for Coach, Leino said. Nobody was on their game today. Just a bad team effort.

E-mail Tim Panaccio at tpanotch@comcast.net

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