Jamie Drysdale’s power-play goal with 5:23 remaining in the third period snapped a 2-2 deadlock and lifted the Flyers to a 4-2 win over the Capitals on Tuesday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Drysdale’s goal came just 24 seconds after Washington center Justin Sourdif was sent off for a whisper of a hooking call, the first penalty call on either side since the front half of the middle frame, more than 27 minutes of playing time.
The Caps played well enough to earn points, and goaltender Clay Stevenson turned in another strong performance while starting both ends of a set of back-to-back games for the first time in his NHL career, but Washington’s three-game winning streak was halted.
“It was an unfortunate result,” laments Caps defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk, who assisted on Anthony Beauvillier’s game-tying goal earlier in the third period. “Obviously, we didn't have our best, but back-to-back sometimes that's going to be the case. I thought we worked hard, did the right things to kind of put ourselves in a decent spot there; [we] tie it up in the third.
“[Stevenson] gave us a great chance to even be in that game early on. And then it looked like we kind of took over in the third there, and then we got that unfortunate penalty call. And yeah, that's the deciding factor there.”
Philadelphia broke the seal on the scoresheet just ahead of the six-minute mark of the opening period. After the Flyers entered the Washington zone, Matvei Michkov curled around the net and up the right wing half wall before going cross ice for Travis Sanheim. Sanheim went to Owen Tippett in the right circle, and he found enough time and space to cut to the cage and beat Stevenson with a backhander at 5:56.
Stevenson denied Tippett from in tight just after the midpoint of the first, and he also thwarted both Sean Couturier and Trevor Zegras in the final two minutes of the opening stanza, keeping the Caps within one.
The Flyers doubled up their lead on a fortuitous bounce early in the second. From the left half wall, Carl Grundstrom fired a feed toward Couturier on the weak side, but the puck caught the skate of Caps defenseman Jakob Chychrun and bounded into the Washington net for a 2-0 Philly advantage at 4:45 of the second.
Soon after the Grundstrom goal, the Caps went shorthanded for the second time in the contest, and they managed to cut the lead in half with a shorthanded goal. Beauvillier broke it out of the Caps’ end on a 2-on-1 with Aliaksei Protas riding shotgun. Beauvillier hit Protas with a nice feed, and Protas put it home to make it a 2-1 contest at 8:12 of the middle frame.
“Great job by Beauvi,” says Protas. “I saw he got a little step on the forward there, and I thought it was maybe our chance to try a little odd man rush, and great play by him. I got fortunate [for it] to go through, because it wasn't my best shot. But luckily it got in, and turned a little momentum our way, I think.”
Philly netminder Dan Vladar made a nifty stop on Tom Wilson in the back half of the second – just after Flyers forward Bobby Brink hit the iron on a breakaway – and he also stopped Hendrix Lapierre from the top of the paint after Lapierre took a pretty pass from Brandon Duhaime.
Washington’s best look at an equalizer in the second likely came late in the frame when Wilson fed Protas for an empty-net chance, but a defender got a bit of a hook on the big Washington winger, forcing his shot to go just a hair wide.
But there was no call.
“I felt like it was a hook,” says Protas. “Because it felt like my body got turned, low on the side, and it was about to be – I feel like – a tap-in, but I ended up missing the net because I felt something. But again, it’s up to the refs; it’s not up to me. We tied it up and could win that game, but it is what it is.”
Early in the third, the Caps managed to get the game evened up at 2-2. Washington managed to put together a bit of time in the offensive zone – a rather infrequent occurrence for both teams to that point of the game – and after a defense-to-defense exchange, van Riemsdyk put a shot toward the net, and Sourdif deflected it. Vladar made the save, but Beauvillier was there to hammer the rebound home at 2:40.
Vladar closed the door the rest of the way, and Rasmus Ristolainen accounted for the 4-2 final with a late -empty-net goal.
“We would have liked to get that game to overtime,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “especially getting that game-tying goal early in the third period. And I felt like the rest of our third period was solid. Even at 2-2, we were still trying to control the play, and [we] had some decent looks. Just the penalty becomes the difference in the game.
Despite controlling 57 percent of all the shot attempts in the game at 5-on-5, the Caps had just a single power play in Tuesday’s game, and it came at 2:55 of the first period. The Flyers had two extra-man opportunities early in the second, and the fateful one that produced the game-winner late in the third.
