Bruins Blast Flyers in 6-0 Blowout

There is a famous riddle that asks, “What happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?”

The Flyers came into this afternoon’s game with a seven-game win streak while the Bruins were working with a three-game win streak of their own. Both teams were sitting at the top of their respective divisions. One of these teams had to lose, and in this case it was the Flyers in a spectacular 6-0 blowout.

“I thought that was an ‘old fashioned ass-kicking’ today, in every area of the game,” said Kimmo Timonen. “We were slow, we didn’t have energy today. They [had] every bounce go in, but they were obviously the better team today. We have to think about the game a little bit, because we sucked today, in my mind, but we got to move on.”

The Flyers got caught deep with too aggressive a forecheck at the very start of the game, resulting in an odd-man rush the other way. Rich Peverley held up at the blue line and then threw the puck to Benoit Pouliot. The puck bounced off his shin and past Ilya Bryzgalov, just 27 seconds in the game.

Jody Shelley fought with Bruins captain Zdeno Chara soon after, helping Chara rack up 1/3 of his eventual Gordie Howe hat trick. It was Shelley’s first fight of the season.

Just over two minutes later, Kevin Marshall missed coverage on Daniel Paille, who tapped in a rebound at Bryzgalov’s doorstep. Marshall would have just one more shift that period and only two shifts in the second, before coach Peter Laviolette realized that keeping him off the ice wasn’t going to make a difference in the final score.

A string of penalties crippled the team’s ability to stop the bleeding.  A too many men on the ice penalty led to Chara’s goal followed by a nearly 2:00 5-on-3 shorthanded situation that the team almost killed before Milan Lucic re-directed a shot from Joe Corvo.

The final kick to the groin was a shot from Timonen that hit Sean Couturier in the back of the helmet. Couturier went down to the ice for about a minute before being helped off.  He was sent to Pennsylvania Hospital for further evaluation and will miss the next two games.

The second period was not much different from the first.  Nathan Horton scored yet another powerplay goal for the Bruins, forcing Laviolette to replace Bryzgalov with Sergei Bobrovsky at the 7:06 mark.  Bob would go on to stop 16 of 17 shots through the rest of the game.

Zac Rinaldo was boarded by Lucic late in the second period, resulting in a five minute major and game misconduct for Lucic. The hit didn’t phase Rinaldo, who would end up fighting Horton in retaliation. Lucic told the New England Sports Network after the game “I realized he was in a bit of a vulnerable position…” before going on to say he watched the tape and questioned how Rinaldo had turned into the boards. He told Joe Haggerty of CSNNE that he “felt like I made every effort to take [Rinaldo] out laterally. I looked at point of contact. There were no numbers.  It was all shoulder.”

The hit still did not win any favors for the young agitator, who was given a ten-minute misconduct at the start of the third period without explanation as well as a cross-checking penalty.

The officiating throughout the course of the game was abysmal, but it did not favor any team. It was not used as an excuse by any of the players either.

“I think a team that starts looking at these excuses is setting themselves up for failure,” said Shelley. “We have a plan. We know what we can do.”

“I’ve seen these happen so many times. It’s not an excuse, it shouldn’t happen, but it always happens to everyone,” said Timonen.  “Now we have to go back on the road and make sure we do a better job than today.”

One can only hope that the team got this stinker out of their system and will bounce back on Monday against the Colorado Avalanche.

Twitter handle @pelle31lives, a writer for Flyers Faithful, pointed out that the last time that the Bruins had a 5-0 lead on the Flyers was on December 17, 1972. Today’s loss is also the worst home shutout loss to the Bruins in the team’s history.

For the latest Flyers news and updates, you can follow me on twitter (@JoshJanet).