The Devils easily beat the Flyers 5-1 in New Jersey yesterday afternoon. The Flyers have turned essentially into Jekyll and Hyde. The Saturday afternoon game in Philly the Flyers looked great. Sunday afternoon in the Meadowlands the Flyers looked really, really bad. So what happened, what was the difference? Saturday they had Forsberg, Sunday they did not. Saturday playing at home the fans were huge giving the Flyers a ton of energy, Sunday playing in Jersey no energy to pull from. Keven Weekes vs Martin Broudeur. Offensively the Devils are a more balanced team then the Rangers. Rangers do have Jagr, but if you shut him out you shutdown the Rangers. Devils are defensively a better team than the Rangers. Devils are also hot winning their last 10 straight beating Ottawa, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Rangers and Carolina. Besides Pittsburgh all playoff bound teams, if Montreal makes it in.
So yeah the Flyers play wasn’t up to par, but they were playing a much better team.

Robert Esche who got the start in goal gave up 3 goals on 12 shots and was pulled in the 2nd period. About 30 seconds later Simon Gagne scored the only Flyer goal. Interesting point though when Esche was pulled he seem to yell at the bench.

Donald Brashear- “He was very ticked off to get pulled, we weren’t playing good, and he was trying to fire up the bench, obviously, it didn’t work too much.
It wasn’t directed at me. He told us to get our head [in the game]. I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He was looking at me, and I thought it was personal. Then I sat next to him on the bench. He said to me it wasn’t personal…
It was frustration. We had a good game against the Rangers. We were trying to follow it up with another good game, and we had a bad performance from a lot of players. If we’re going to make it to the playoffs, we are not going to go far playing like that.”

I remember a certain Czech Republic goalie playing for the Flyers doing the same thing in game 5 of the 2003 playoffs in Ottawa. He wasn’t seen again in a Flyers uniform. In a way one has to defend what Cechmanek and Esche did. Goalies play every game, they stand it goal and watch the team play in front of them. In big games like yesterdays when they see the team playing like ass it tends to get frustrating and you have these types of outbursts. It will be interesting to see if this outburst plays into who will be starting in the playoffs.
Antero Niittymaki didn’t do much when better put into the game giving up 2 goals on 8 shots.

The Carter-Dimitrakos-Umberger line while being hot the past 10 games when cold with no goals and also being on the ice for 4 of the Devils goals, each being -4 in the game. Derian Hatcher was also -4, making him -11 for the month of April.

One fight in the game with Denis Gauthier vs Grant Marshall. I don’t understand why Gauthier drops the gloves if he isn’t going to throw. This is the second fight as a Flyer where he drops the gloves but does not thru a punch. Fight win to Marshall. Gauthier suffered cut cartilage in his ear during the fight.

So we are down to one game left in regular season, a Tuesday game in New York against the Islanders. At this point the Flyers, Rangers or Devils can still win the division. For the Flyers to win the division they need to beat the Islanders, the Rangers and Devils need to lose. For the Rangers to win the division they need to beat Ottawa. For the Devils to win the division they need to beat Montreal and the Rangers have to lose to Ottawa. This doesn’t take into consideration overtime losses which make it a bit more complicated.