Tag: Stanley Cup Playoffs

PHILADELPHIA — Forget flipping games on TV, scrolling social media, reading the ticker or most traditional means of scoreboard watching in the NHL.

The Philadelphia Flyers are ready to tune out the noise — and can only hope when they tune back in, Game 82 will mean something to their playoff fortunes.

“We’re not going to look at the scoreboard,” coach John Tortorella said. “Maybe some people do. I’m not.”

Travis Konecny scored a short-handed breakaway goal and Samuel Ersson stopped 20 shots to keep the resolute Flyers’ miniscule postseason hopes alive with one game left to play in a 1-0 win over the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night.

“I’m just glad they showed who they are,” Tortorella said. “They’ve been that all year long.”

The Flyers entered Saturday with two games left while Pittsburgh, Washington and Detroit all had three games remaining as they competed for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

The Flyers had to win both games to have a shot at a playoff berth. The rest hinged on Detroit, Pittsburgh and Washington all losing or tying their games to give the Flyers a slim mathematical edge at making the postseason for the first time since they reached the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2020.

Ersson said he won’t watch the other games “at all” ahead of Tuesday’s finale against Washington.

“You want to look,” he said, laughing. “But I think it’s better to just focus on what we’re doing and what we can control here.”

Konecny’s NHL-best sixth short-handed goal past Kaapo Kahkonen in the second period stood as the difference maker and ensured the Flyers at least ended the game with a chance to extend their season.

“It was just getting back to believing,” Konecny said. “We know where we’re at. We talk in the room about as long as we go home after the last three and say we gave it our best shot, it’s all you can do. You can feel it in the room right now. Guys want to prove we should be in the spot we’re at.”

Just getting to the last week of the season with meaningful hockey to play had to feel like a small win for the franchise. In the midst of a rebuild, the team was widely picked by experts, fans and bettors to finish near the bottom of the NHL. In his second season on the bench, Tortorella instead squeezed every ounce of talent, and summoned all the grit he could out of his players to thrust them into a playoff race.

For most of the season, the Flyers not only played over their heads, they succeeded while navigating the loss of No. 1 goalie Carter Hart to sexual assault charges and the murky circumstances that led to 2022 No. 1 draft pick Cutter Gauthier forcing a trade.

The good times have been scarce in Philly when the NHL playoffs start — the Flyers missed each of the last three seasons and haven’t played a home postseason game since 2018. Philadelphia hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since its lone championships in 1974 and 1975.

So why did the slide start?

Perhaps a notoriously prickly Tortorella pushed his players past the point where they could produce more than what he expected out of them. Ersson went from backup goalie to workhorse and faded down the stretch under the stress of heavy minutes. The Flyers lost eight straight games — a streak snapped only Thursday against the Rangers — against some of the worst teams in the NHL. And only those inside the locker room know the true consequences of Tortorella’s decision to healthy scratch Sean Couturier only 34 days after he was named team captain.

“I know the record thinks we just fell off the map but we were playing good,” Tortorella said. “We just couldn’t keep the puck out of that and we couldn’t score.”

Tortorella said he expected in the preseason for Ersson to play no more than 20 games. The Swedish goalie instead played his 50th out of 81 games on Saturday night.

“We have struggled in net. And it’s not the persons, it’s the goaltending situation that I think knocked us down,” Tortorella said. “I think we’re 90-plus (points) if the goaltending situation didn’t happen the way it did. It caught up to us. And I’m not apologizing to anybody for playing Ers as much as I did. I’d do it again.”

Flyers general manager Danny Briere and team president Keith Jones are poised for another long offseason to figure how to separate the good from this year out of the freefall at the end and find out just what can turn the franchise into winners again.

They just have to keep the faith the decisions won’t start this week.

UP NEXT

Devils host the Islanders on Monday.

Flyers host the Capitals on Tuesday.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Akil Thomas scored his first NHL goal and David Rittich stopped 15 shots as the Los Angeles Kings beat the San Jose Sharks 2-1 on Thursday night to improve their playoff position.

“It felt amazing,” Thomas said. “For me, I just wanted to have a good first (period). To score in the first period kind of just made the nerves go away and made me feel a little bit more comfortable.”

Adrian Kempe also scored for the Kings, who are 7-0-1 in their last eight games against San Jose. Los Angeles moved seven points ahead of St. Louis for the second Western Conference wild card with six games remaining.

The Kings also stayed one point behind Nashville for the top wild card and climbed within one point of Vegas for third place in the Pacific Division.

“We’re well aware of who’s ahead of us, who’s behind us,” Thomas said. “I think we just come to every game knowing that we need the win.”

Klim Kostin scored for the last-place Sharks, who have lost 11 of 12. Mikael Granlund had an assist to extend his point streak to six games.

Mackenzie Blackwood made 25 saves in the loss.

“I didn’t love our team’s first period,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “They played much better in the second and third.”

Kempe scored his 25th goal on a breakaway midway through the first to give the Kings an early lead.

Thomas scored 18 seconds later to make it 2-0. The 24-year-old center was playing his second NHL game. He had 22 goals in 61 games this season for Ontario in the American Hockey League.

Kostin put the Sharks on the board with 1:52 left and Blackwood pulled for an extra skater.

“In the end, all anybody cares about tomorrow is, did you get the two points or didn’t you?” Los Angeles interim coach Jim Hiller said. “So we’ll take the two points. We’ll leave this one behind. We’ll have a rest tomorrow and then we’ll work on the next two points.”

The Kings outshot the Sharks 27-16.

Rittich’s best save came in the first period when he stopped Filip Zadina on a partial breakaway.

“We didn’t give them much,” Kings center Pierre-Luc Dubois said. “We clogged the middle of the ice pretty well. And when we made mistakes, (Rittich) was huge for us.”

Los Angeles center Phillip Danault missed his fourth straight game with an upper-body injury.

San Jose center Jack Studnicka played his 100th NHL game.

UP NEXT

Kings: Host the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday.

Sharks: Host the St. Louis Blues on Saturday.

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TAMPA, Fla. — David Perron scored the go-ahead goal with 2:40 remaining and the Detroit Red Wings ended a four-game winless streak with a 4-2 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday.

Perron shoveled a rebound past Andrei Vasilevskiy to break a 2-2 tie as the Red Wings won the finale of a five-game road trip. Patrick Kane, Robby Fabbri and Lucas Raymond also scored and Alex Lyon made 34 saves to end a personal 0-8-2 streak. The Red Wings have 82 points and are even with the Washington Capitals for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, though Washington has played two fewer games.

“DP does a lot of things right all the time,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. “He’s an emotional leader for us. No one wants it more than him. It’s one thing to talk, but he’s doing it by example.”

Lyon won for the first time since Feb. 27, an 8-3 win against the Capitals.

“For me it was very satisfying; it’s been a while,” he said. “We’ve got to take it a day at a time and a game at a time. That was a big win, so we can enjoy that one on the flight home.”

Perron said Lyon was “the best player on the ice for us. That’s what we need from our goalies, to be honest. The margin of error is very slim for us, and we’ve got to be solid all the time.”

Anthony Cirelli and Steven Stamkos scored for the Lightning, who had been 8-0-1 in their previous nine. Vasilevskiy finished with 28 saves.

Perron’s goal came after the Lightning had dominated for long stretches of the third period.

“We were in pretty good shape for most of that third period, until we weren’t,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “We haven’t lost in regulation since the first week in March, now we’re in April. We’ve asked a lot from the guys, and they’ve delivered.

“I can’t sit here and be hard on the guys, they’ve played really well for us.”

The Red Wings took a 1-0 lead 37 seconds into the second when Kane picked up the rebound of Dylan Larkin’s shot and whipped in a backhander from the lower right circle. But Cirelli tied it at 8:36 with a shorthanded goal, beating Lyon with a wrist shot from the top of the right circle.

Fabbri put the Red Wings back in front at 3:40 of the third period, jamming a loose puck past Vasilevskiy. Stamkos tied the game 2-2 at 5:59 with a power-play goal.

Raymond hit the empty net with 1:03 left.

The Lightning dressed Kyle Konin, a 26-year-old emergency backup goalie, because Jonas Johansson was unable to play due to a lower-body injury. Konin last dressed for an NHL game on Dec. 2, 2021, for the St. Louis Blues when Jordan Binnington was placed in COVID-19 protocol the morning of their game against the Lightning.

UP NEXT

Red Wings: Host the New York Rangers on Friday night.

Lightning: Open a three-game road trip Wednesday night at Toronto.

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SUNRISE, Fla. — Aleksander Barkov scored twice in the third period to get Florida going, Sam Reinhart scored the lone shootout goal and the Panthers rallied to beat the Detroit Red Wings 3-2 on Saturday.

It was the first time Barkov — in his 11th season in the NHL, all with the Panthers — had ever scored multiple third-period goals on home ice. He picked the right time to do it, and the two points in the standings pulled Florida, at least temporarily, back atop the Atlantic Division with the Boston Bruins.

Boston plays at Washington later Saturday.

“We didn’t like our first period,” Barkov said. “We had some chances but I don’t think that was our game. So after the first period, in the second and third, we started playing a lot harder and that looked more like us. I think we found the way to win and we just need to believe that that’s how we need to play.”

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped all three shots he faced in the shootout and made 20 saves for Florida, which won for the second time in its last eight games.

Dylan Larkin, who took a shot to the inside of his knee 28 seconds into the game and briefly left later in the first period, scored a game-tying goal with four minutes left in regulation for the Red Wings. Robby Fabbri also scored for Detroit to open the game.

Both of those goals came with the man-advantage. Former Panthers goalie Alex Lyon, who played a huge role in getting Florida to the playoffs a year ago, stopped 36 shots for Detroit.

“He was excellent,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. “And he had to be.”

The Red Wings picked up a point and moved within one of Washington, pending the Saturday night outcome, for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

“An absolute huge point,” Lalonde said. “Under the circumstances, you probably want both points, but all that said that’s points in two of our last three games.”

Barkov told Bally Sports Florida after the game that the Panthers got yelled at a bit after a lackluster first period. He took coach Paul Maurice’s words to heart and had two goals in the third just 2:43 apart.

“That’s what you want out of your best player,” Reinhart said. “When we’re playing our best, he’s leading the way.”

UP NEXT

Red Wings: Visit Tampa Bay on Monday.

Panthers: Visit Toronto on Monday.

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Roope Hintz had a goal and two assists and the Western Conference-leading Dallas Stars wrapped up a playoff spot, beating the Vancouver Canucks 3-1 on Thursday night for their sixth straight victory.

“You have to do a lot of work, starting six, seven months ago, to give yourself the opportunity to be one of those 16 teams that plays for the Stanley Cup,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “So, I’m just proud of our group. You go through all kinds of adversity through the year, injuries and different things, but we found a way every week to find a way to wins games.”

Jake Oettinger stopped 27 shot to help Dallas improve to 46-19-9 and open a three-point lead over second-place Vancouver in the West.

“It felt like a playoff game,” Oettinger said. “They’re a great team, obviously, over there. They’ve been one of the best teams in the league all year and there’s just not a lot of flaws in that team. So just a good measuring stick and obviously we know what’s at stake. Just to get a gritty win like that is huge.”

Jamie Benn added a goal and an an assist, Jason Robertson had an empty-netter and Joe Pavelski had two assists. Dallas went 2 for 5 on the power play, while Vancouver was 0 for 3.

A “mechanical” power play and careless penalties proved costly for the Canucks, said coach Rick Tocchet.

“I think guys will be disappointed,” he said. “You’re looking for somebody to make a play or maybe a little more discipline. Maybe that’s the difference in the game. These games are coin flips.”

J.T. Miller scored for Vancouver, and Casey DeSmith made 31 saves.

“This is the kind of hockey it’s probably going to be the rest of the way, the kind of hockey it is around the league right now,” DeSmith said. “Everyone’s just trying to buckle down and play the right way, do the right things. I thought we did that for most of the night. Obviously, special teams was the difference.”

Benn gave Dallas a 2-1 lead on a power play with 3:08 left, scoring a snap shot from the slot. The Stars captain has points in eight straight games and goals in six.

Hintz opened the scoring on a power late in the first period. Miller tied it midway through the second, sending a one-timer flying past Oettinger for his 35th.

Vancouver pulled DeSmith late for an extra attacker, only to see Hintz win a neutral-zone puck battle that led to Robertson tucking a shot into the empty net for his 27th.

UP NEXT

Stars: At Seattle on Saturday night.

Canucks: Host Anaheim on Sunday.

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WASHINGTON — Tom Wilson scored for a second consecutive game, Charlie Lindgren robbed Connor Bedard among his 29 saves, and the Washington Capitals beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 on Saturday night to keep pace in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Hendrix Lapierre, Michael Sgarbossa and Sonny Milano also scored for Washington, which is 7-2-1 in its last 10. The Capitals moved five points back of Philadelphia for third place in the Metropolitan Division. They also are within striking distance of Tampa Bay and Detroit for wild-card spots.

Washington is looking for one or more teams in playoff position to falter, and then it has to make a run itself despite one of the NHL’s toughest remaining schedules. Taking care of business against lowly opponents like Chicago and the Caps winning some games they shouldn’t are also part of the recipe to return to the playoffs.

Unlike a letdown loss last weekend at home to Arizona, the Blackhawks were not much of an obstacle. Washington dominated pretty much from puck drop, taking advantage of a handful of early penalties and lightning up Petr Mrazek, who allowed four goals on 26 shots.

Lindgren did not have to make too many spectacular stops but went full extension post to post to deny Bedard with 4:45 left. The top draft pick couldn’t crack Lindgren on three other shots on net.

Wilson’s goal gave him three over the past seven games since ending a lengthy drought. He also scored Thursday in a 6-0 rout of rival Pittsburgh, hours after the death of his 95-year-old grandfather.

Lapierre continued his impressive run of production with his fifth goal in six games since being recalled from Hershey of the American Hockey League. Milano’s goal was his 10th of the season, and John Carlson and Aliaksei Protas each had two assists.

Tyler Johnson scored for the Blackhawks with 10:11 left in the third period. Still mired in a rebuild after winning the Bedard draft lottery, they have lost eight of nine and 16 of 18.

Beating Chicago in each team’s first game post-trade deadline wasn’t the biggest test for Washington. A five-game Western Conference trip with stops in Winnipeg, Vancouver, Seattle, Edmonton and Calgary — four playoff-bound opponents and one in contention — will determine whether the Caps’ postseason hopes will be realistic when they return home.

UP NEXT

Blackhawks: Host Arizona on Sunday.

Capitals: Visit the Jets on Monday night.

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