There will be no sweep in this series as the Flyers were able to beat the Sabres in game 3, 4-2. Special teams won the game for the Flyers. Brian Savage scored a short handed goal in the first period to tie up the game at 1. Peter Forsberg scored twice, with the second on the power play. Overall the Flyers were 1 for 5 on the power play, but more importantly killed off all 7 Sabres power plays. Simon Gagne added an empty netter to seal the game.
Scoring for the Sabres was Alex Kotalik in the first and Tim Connolly in the third.
Robert Esche who got more defensive support in this game stopped 26 of 28 shots. Ryan Miller stopped 23 of 26 shots. Each of them let in a soft goal, overall they played about the same.
R.J. Umberger returned to the lineup after the big hit he received in game one. Umberger had 8:16 in ice time, with one hit, one shot and was minus 1. With his return Ben Eager was a healthy scratch. Also scratched was Donald Brashear in favor of Branko Radivojevic.
As if just the win wasn’t enough there had to be more controversy surrounding Denis Gauthier. Late in the second period on the penalty kill Gauthier unintentionally speared J.P. Dumont in an area that I guess was still tender from sports hernia surgery some months ago. Plenty of Sabres fans are going nuts over this since there was no penalty called, it was intentional, he should be suspended, yada yada yada. Lets not speculate what someone’s intent was especially since the players involved say there was no intent to injure which is backed up by replay. If one wanted to speculate one could also speculate the reasoning of why Dumont supposedly under so much pain and distress was down on the ice for so long, had to be helped off the ice and had to be carried back to the dressing room by 4 individuals only to be perfectly fine to play 15 minutes later picking up 7 shifts in the third period. But I won’t go there, lets stick with what we know.
Sabres fans were also upset at the booing Dumont received while he was down on the ice. Does it show class? Nope, but as I said in the game 2 recap part of home ice advantage is have to mentally deal with what fans say/chant/scream, whatever. There was applauding as Dumont was helped off the ice, the Sabres fans must have overlooked that. One thing the fans did that I thought was a little embarrassing was not paying attention to who scored the empty net goal. If Forsberg would have scored it would mean a hatrick and the hats that come with that. But Gagne scored it and the hats came anyway, hats, shirts and even a bra according to one MSG commentator.
Teppo Numminen left the game in the second period with what is being called an upper body injury. No word yet if Sabres fans are going to blame Denis Gauthier for this injury too. Late word is that Numminen left the game with an irregular heart beat. He was diagnosed with a dilated aorta in 2004. I hope it works ok for him, the heart is one thing that you cant mess around with.
Areas that the Flyers need to improve on for game four include staying out of the penalty box, they are still taking too many undisciplined penalties. The Dimitrakos-Umberger-Carter (DUC line) needs to start contributing offensively again. They really became a scoring line in the last couple months of the season. If they could get going it would really help out the Forsberg line.
Stars for the game were Peter Forsberg, Maxim Afinogenov and Brian Savage.
Keith Primeau who was expecting to make his comeback in either game 3 or 4 has suffered a setback and most likely wont be available until the second round at the earliest.
Although his status changes from day to day so really it is hard to tell what his story is.