Another Solid Effort for Flyers Not Enough in Loss to NHL-best Capitals

BOX SCORE

You see it in their faces. Feel it in their voices.
 
And you wonder how it affects them night after night.
 
The Flyers played another pretty solid loss, as they say, Wednesday night against the Washington Capitals at Wells Fargo Center.
 
A lot closer than 4-1 makes it appear (see Instant Replay). It was a lot like that solid loss last week in Calgary, too.
 
"Maybe a little bit similar," coach Dave Hakstol said. "Our effort was good start to finish. There's always a couple mistakes you make you want to clean up and do better. I thought tonight we had more opportunities than we did in the Calgary game."
 
They had more goals, too. Except two got taken away.
 
One for goalie interference. The other hit the crossbar and even after a long celebration and delay, was ruled no good.
 
That's been the Flyers' no-luck this season. It's all gone wrong for them as their wild-card aspirations slip further away.
 
"It's very frustrating," team captain Claude Giroux said. "Same story. We need to find a way here. We say the same thing after each game. I like the way we're playing.
 
"We played a good hockey game, not good enough. We have a challenge in front of us. In the past, we've been a team that doesn't back down. We have to keep our heads high and battling."
 
The Flyers had the right approach, coming out fast and aggressive on the Caps. In fact, Jakub Voracek scored 23 seconds into the game during a net scrum.
 
Thing was, Caps coach Barry Trotz correctly saw goalie interference as Dale Weise actually pushed Braden Holtby aside. It was an easy coach's challenge to overturn the goal and that's what happened.
 
Weise was beside himself after the game.
 
"What I was trying to do was brace myself so I didn't bowl him over and it comes back the other way," Weise said.
 
"I don't know what else to do there. I'm trying to poke the puck with one hand and brace myself so I don't hit him."
 
Naturally, six minutes later, Brandon Manning turned a puck over along the boards with T.J. Oshie and Alex Ovechkin and it resulted in Nick Backstrom getting a great setup in the high slot for a 1-0 Caps' lead.
 
"Even after that, we came back and played well and had good chances," Weise said. "It's the same story every night. We don't capitalize on it and give up a few chances and they score on their opportunities."
 
That's when frustration seeped in on the Flyers and the penalties began to mount. Sean Couturier tried to get away with an elbow. Didn't work.
 
The Caps dazzled the Flyers with brilliant puck movement, culminating with Evgeny Kuznetsov's goal to make it 2-0 at 16:28. He had two goals in the game.
 
While that could have ruined them, the Flyers came out hard in the second as Ivan Provorov appeared to score in the opening minute. However, replay confirmed his shot hit the crossbar. Two near-goals for the Flyers.
 
"I shot it and saw that [the puck] went up and I didn't hear a sound," Provorov said. "I thought it went in."
 
No matter. Manning atoned for his first-period miscue by saving a puck from leaving the zone and then firing on net where Brayden Schenn scored a rare five-on-five goal by batting the puck out of the air to cut the Flyers' deficit in half.
 
Of Schenn's 19 goals, 14 have come on the power play.
 
Giroux's line with Schenn and Wayne Simmonds consisted of the Flyers' only players on the right side of the plus-minus category. And to show how deceiving that can be, Voracek worked his tail off, too, but was minus-3.
 
That's how it goes these days for this group.
 
"It's been a lot of games where it's been one- or two-goal hockey games and it's tough to do," Schenn said. "We're generating shots, but I don't know if we're generating enough chances.
 
"At the end of the day, you feel you play hard and a pretty good hockey game and end up scoring one goal again. Whether it's 3-1, 4-1, you score one goal, you won't win many hockey games."
 
The Flyers are 3-6-1 since coming out of the All-Star break. Of those seven total losses, including overtime, they have scored more than one goal just once.
 
"We've got to rise above it, each and every one of us," Hakstol said. "Get back at it. And that is what this group has continually done. We have to do that one more time here."