Flyers’ GM says no room for errors in goalkeeping in this series after Philys crash out 4-0 against Bruins
The GM of Philadelphia Flyers, Paul Holmgren, eagerly talked about his team but refrained from giving any harsh comments about the team’s goalkeeping department. Flyers had to face an embarrassing exit from the playoffs at the hands of Boston Bruins who
won the fourth game to win the series by 4-0 and made its way into the Conference Finals.
The morale of the team was hurt even before the game since they were unable to come up with anything impressive in the last few games.
The fourth game of the series proved to be no different with Bruins winning the game and outshooting Flyers by 20-7 in the series.
The shocking thing about the series was the fact that Flyers’ coach, Peter Laviolette, made seven goalkeeping changes over the past 11 games in the playoffs.
The fourth game witnessed rookie goalkeeper, Sergei Bobrovsky, starting the game. He was expected to be not fully high on confidence and morale as this was only his second start in the playoffs, the first coming in Game 2 during the first round.
Though Bobrovsky made 22 saves during the game, he was unable to cement his position in the starting line-up.
In the end, the Flyers lost the game by 5-1 in regulation time. This meant that they lost the series 4-0 and got knocked out of the semifinals.
"I don't think we can fault our goaltending at any point in this series", Holmgren said. "I know it looks bad when you're taking guys out all the time. But goaltending, as I've said before, is a function of your team. Was (Bobrovsky) great (in Game 4), no,
but he's a young kid and under intense circumstances. But we didn't lose the game because of our goalie. We lost the game because their team outplayed our team".
Another factor that led to Flyers’ defensive problems might well be the fact that its star player in defence, Chris Pronger, is missing from the team.
Flyers’ GM expressed his desires that the team management should sit and review the tapes and change the strategies from where they went wrong.
"I don't think it was matter of us not working out there", Holmgren said. "They were the better team and they were better for the better part of the four games and it showed”.
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