Saturday, May 07, 2011

Bruins Sweep the Flyers, Second Time the Charm

Well, what the Boston Bruins couldn't do in the 2010 playoffs, they were able to do in the 2011 playoffs. The Philadelphia Flyers have been swept out of the playoffs after a 5-1 win by the Bruins at home, making perfect use of their home-ice advantage.

For a great stretch of Game Four, the play was tight, there wasn't too much separating the two teams, even when the Bruins went up 2-1 in the early part of the 3rd period, but the 3-1 goal by Milan Lucic with just under five minutes to go was the breaking point, as the Flyers could not get any traction on the ice and the Bruins ended up with two more empty-netters.

The big-gamers for the Bruins in Game Four were Milan Lucic with two goals, Nathan Horton with two assists, Johnny Boychuk with the winner and Tim Thomas making 22 saves for the win.

The Bruins are also awaiting more news on forward Patrice Bergeron, as he left Game Four with an upper-body injury.  There is plenty of worry that Bergeron may have suffered another concussion, but that likely won't be disclosed before the start of the Conference Finals, if at all.

So, working on the Flyers elimination, they were not the favourites in this series, but they were definitely one of the favourites to come out of the East, according to the picks on the sheet.  The Flyers had 179 selections to their team, which worked out to be 79% of their possible picks in the pool.  Daniel Briere was the most popular Flyers player with 37 picks to his name, which was tops in Box 16.

In pool scoring, the Flyers were led by Claude Giroux, who was also quite popular with 18 picks, he had 12 points, but only one of those points was a goal.  Giroux's 12 points is only second in Box 15 on the sheet.

Game-Winning Goals
New Playoffs Game Winner ButtonTo review the last three games in the playoffs, Ryan Kesler scored the winner for the Canucks on Thursday night, Darren Helm scored the late goal to keep the Red Wings alive and Johnny Boychuk eliminated the Flyers with his 3rd period blast.  The pool leader in GWG's through Friday night is still Headfirst, who currently has a 1 goal lead with 14.

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