"They came out firing to start the game," says Hart. "We bounced back in the second and the third and generated a lot of chances. and that was the message [Flyers coach Alain Vigneault] had for us [after] the first is we need to retaliate and come out hard in the second, and that is what we did. I thought we came out hard in the final 40."
Philly had the puck for most of overtime, and the Flyers had the Caps hemmed in their end for the better part of the entire five-minute overtime. With Nicklas Backstrom, Dmitry Orlov and Alex Ovechkin on the ice for more than three minutes each, the Flyers put constant heat on Washington and Holtby. But the Caps survived, and the Flyers had just a 4-3 shots advantage in the extra frame.
"In a 3-on-3 like that," relates Holtby, "especially the way it's becoming more structured, and the fact that you take it back [out of the zone] if you don't have anything. I thought our guys did an outstanding job in not trying to cheat or try and get out of it. We stayed in structure. We just battled through it. That's probably what won us the game right there."