Friday, April 15, 2011
Posted: 3:13 p.m.
By Sarah BaickerCSNPhilly.com
Sabres goalie Ryan Miller has more than a few astonishing feats under his belt, but Thursdays 1-0 shutout win over the Flyers wasnt one of them.
Miller was solid, of course, and stopped all 35 shots that came his way. But he wasnt exactly tested with tough shots from the Flyers, who were held scoreless for the first time in a home playoff game since 2002.
Dont misunderstand. There were Flyer shots; there just werent exactly many quality chances.
Its not that we didnt generate, coach Peter Laviolette said. What we didnt do is get it past the red line, and thats the problem.
Laviolette and a number of his players emphasized at Fridays practice that they were, overall, happy with how they played in the first game of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. Asked repeatedly whether there were tweaks to be made heading into Game 2, Laviolette instead stated a belief that his team simply needs to continue to do exactly what it did on Thursday.
Theres a lot of confidence in our group, and a lot of confidence in our team that well score goals, Laviolette said. We scored a lot of goals this year; were one of the top-scoring teams in the league. It just didnt happen Thursday night.
But it needs to happen Saturday, or the Flyers will travel to upstate New York two games in the hole. Theyve come back from deficits before, of course, but theyd rather not have to do it again.
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After the loss in Game 1, many pointed fingers at the Flyers fruitless power play, which was 0 for 5 and even squandered a 5-on-3 opportunityand was even booed by the fans as seconds ticked down on each chance.
With that in mind, members of the Flyers press corps arrived at Skate Zone Friday fully expecting the team to focus on their ailing man advantage during practice, as defenseman Kimmo Timonen suggested during his postgame interview Thursday. But that was not at all the case.
In fact, not only did the team appear not to spend time working on its power play, a number of the Flyers actually were satisfied by how their power-play units performed, even though it didnt manage to hit the back of the net.
I thought we did pretty well on the power play, Danny Briere said. We retrieved the puck, we moved it around, got some good shots, even on the 5 on 3 we had some quality chances. But Miller made the saves, was able to see the puckthats the one adjustment maybe we have to do better.
So, if its not the power play thats the problem, its simply a matter of solving Miller.
As Laviolette stated, the Flyers did manage to generate chances. The issue is, far too many of those chances wound up right in Millers pads. Even though 35 shots is a decently high numberand was 10 more than the Sabres sent in on Sergei Bobrovskytoo many came in from the perimeter, and far too many were covered up quickly by Miller.
We just have to get a better job of getting the shots through, getting traffic in front of him. Scott Hartnell said. It seems like Miller was getting around, seeing the shots come in and he was sucking them up.
The Flyers know they can best Miller; his numbers against them this season have been far from stellar (his 3.62 goals-against average isn't terribly intimidating). The key, they believe, lies in reboundsgetting them, and putting them to good use.
I thought we got in there, but we didnt get our hands on the rebounds, Briere said. He was good, I think we can probably do a little better job at screening him. But it was one of those nights, where the puck just didnt want to find its way behind him.
If they can convert talk into action, the Flyers will take the ice Saturday evening exactly as they took it Thursday. The sole difference should be what goes on on Miller's doorstep.
After all, even the coach had mostly positive words to share regarding the Game 1 loss, which is often not the case in the event of a shutout.
I dont think its the game that we have a problem with, Laviolette said. Its the score.
E-mail Sarah Baicker at sbaicker@comcastsportsnet.com
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