Washington Capitals drop third preseason game to Flyers

Different location and roster, same result for the Washington Capitals as they fell to the Philadelphia Flyers 3-1 on the road to start their preseason with an 0-2-1 record. They got an early goal from Aliaksei Protas but the Flyers would respond with three unanswered goals. Ilya Samsonov played well despite the loss, it was (as usual) the defense in front of him that was bad.

At 3:18 in the first, Mike Sgarbossa got the puck to Trevor Van Riemsdyk. After his shot missed, Protas got the rebound and shot the puck in. This came on the power play. The Flyers would answer with a power play goal of their own from Claude Giroux. The Flyers led in shots 14-8 after the first period.

The second period was scoreless with the Flyers leading in shots 10-9 in the middle stanza. The highlight of the second period was the power at Wells Fargo Center as the second period ended early with 2:54 left thanks to a power outage. The leftover time was tacked on into the third period.

In the third period the Flyers took the lead two minutes in with a goal from newcomer Cam Atkinson. At 16:56 the Flyers added an insurance goal from Scott Laughton.

Samsonov got the start and played the full game stopping 28 of the 31 shots that he faced. His best save came in the second period when he stopped Atkinson on a breakaway two times in a row.

The Caps are now halfway through the 2021-22 preseason still in search of their first win. They got two road contests against New Jersey and Boston before closing it out at home against this same Flyers team.

Caps head coach Peter Laviolette told the media after the game:

"“Every game is a little bit different. The lineups are changing, so it’s hard to clump it all in. There’s been some good things that we’ve done and definitely some things that we’ve got to do better. All three games, I thought we turned the puck over too much, tonight for sure. Tonight it not only led to us going down and playing defense, but ultimately scoring chances and goals against. We’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the puck. We’ve got a lot of kids in there to look at them and see how they did. I thought they played pretty well.”"

The Caps will once again try for their first preseason win on Monday night at the New Jersey Devils.