Philadelphia Flyers dominate Buffalo Sabres 5-2 - NHL Play-off Recap
Goal-tender Brian Boucher made 26 saves to help the Philadelphia Flyers take a 5-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres in Game 7 of their first-round National Hockey League play-off series on Tuesday night.
After the game, Briere said of Philadelphia’s grace under pressure "I think that our experience really showed. It's not a secret; we have played a lot of big games in the last year with mostly the same group.”
Philadelphia rallied from a 3-2 series deficit to advance to the Eastern Conference semi-finals for the third time in four seasons.
Danny Briere finished with a goal and one assist while Dan Carcillo and Braydon Coburn both tallied first-period goals for the Flyers, who won their first home Game 7 since a 2003 Eastern Conference quarter-final against Toronto Maple Leafs.
James van Riemsdyk and Ville Leino also lit the lamp while Claude Giroux collected two assists for the victors.
“We had big-time players score big-time goals,” Philadelphia Captain Mike Richards said.
Boucher was not selected to start Game 6 on Sunday. He was replaced by Michael Leighton. However, Boucher restored the confidence of Head Coach Peter Laviolette, giving Philadelphia an opportunity to return to the Stanley Cup finals.
The 34-year-old Boucher now has another round to prove that he is the goal-tender who has the ability to lead Philadelphia to its first Stanley Cup Championship since 1975.
“There’s going to be days when things don’t go your way,” Boucher said, “But you have to play through it.”
Tyler Myers and Brad Boyes each posted a goal for Buffalo, which has not won a play-off game since reaching the Eastern Conference finals in 2007.
Sabres goalie Ryan Miller, who recorded two shut-outs in the series, was benched after giving up four goals on 28 shots in just less than 42 minutes. Jhonas Enroth replaced him, who then turned aside seven shots the rest of the way.
Philadelphia held a 2-0 lead on a power-play in the sixth minute of the middle period. The goal occurred when Mike Richards fired a right-point shot that hit Briere in-front, and the former Sabre banged the puck home.
Van Riemsdyk gave the Flyers a 3-0 advantage midway through the second period when he tipped in a shot by Giroux.
The Flyers extended their lead to 4-0 less than two minutes into the final period when Leino blasted a shot from the right circle that beat Miller.
The Sabres finally got on the board in the seventh minute of the third period, when Myers put the puck in the back of the net to cut the deficit to 4-1.
However, the Flyers made it a 5-1 game with less than ten minutes to play in the final period. The goal came when Dan Carcillo scored on his own rebound.
Coburn then capped the scoring with less than a minute to play in the third when he fired a point shot that tickled through Miller’s pads to put the game away.
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