Capitals get crushed by Flyers 7-2

It was an entertaining first 20 minutes between the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers before the Flyers took over.

The Washington Capitals flat out got crushed by the Philadelphia Flyers 7-2. Alex Ovechkin was held off the scoresheet so he still sits at 698. He’ll have to wait until at least Monday night to reach 700.

At 15:13, Jonas Siegenthaler was called for hooking Connor Bunnaman, giving the Flyers their first power play of the night where they quickly cashed in nine seconds later on a goal from Sean Couturier.

The Caps got a power play of their own shortly after when Brian Elliott was whistled for tripping Lars Eller. T.J. Oshie tied the game at 18:18 with a top shelf shot from the right face-off circle. Jakub Vrana and Nicklas Backstrom had the assists. It was Oshie’s 20th goal of the season.

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1-1 was the score after the first 20 minutes with the Caps having the edge in shots 11-9. From that point on, it was all Flyers with three goals in each of the next two periods.

It started with three goals in the span of a minute and 45 seconds. Michael Raffl got things started at 2:45. Couturier netted his second of the night 14 seconds later while James van Riemsdyk scored at 4:30.

All of a sudden a 1-1 game became 4-1 and that would be the score after 40 after shots were even at nine apiece in the middle stanza.

The Flyers added three more in the third to round out their scoring. First it was Nicolas Aube-Kubel at 2:58. Travis Konecny added to the lead at 5:47 and Claude Giroux scored on the power play at 8:02.

Braden Holtby got the start and he allowed all seven goals. Coach Todd Reirden finally pulled him for Ilya Samsonov when it really got out of hand.

Evgeny Kuznetsov got one back at 12:17, finishing off a drive to the net for his 19th goal of the season. Oshie and Martin Fehervary had the helpers, the latter picking up his first NHL point.

Back to Holtby. Although seven pucks got past him, the loss was entirely a team effort and not his fault. Players expressed that and Reirden himself in the locker room after the game.

Radko Gudas told Samantha Pell of The Washington Post (subscription required):

"“We let him down for sure. It’s definitely not his fault. He played great, I think, this game, and opportunities we gave them, he didn’t really have much — with the breakaway, right, early in the game. He was holding us in there. I think he gave us opportunity to win this game, but we didn’t perform well enough for him to get the two points earlier.”"

The Capitals are off Sunday before they go back to work on Monday looking to bounce back against the New York Islanders that night.