Capitals' power play dooms Flyers

Washington's overwhelming advantage in special teams has put the Capitals on the brink of sweeping the Flyers in their best-of-seven opening round Stanley Cup series.

Once again the Flyers couldn't score on the power play or stop the Capitals when they had the man advantage during Monday's 6-1 loss to the Capitals at the Wells Fargo Center.

The Capitals are up three games to none heading into what could be the clinching game Wednesday in Philadelphia.

The Flyers are 0 for 13 this series on the power play after failing to score on the five times they had the man advantage on Monday.

The penalty killing has also struggled. Washington, with patient stick-handling wizards such as center Nicklas Backstrom, has dissected the Flyers' penalty killing units and is 8 for 17 on the power play. The Caps were 5 of 9 on Monday.

"I think we are using different things. We are shooting the puck and creating traffic in front of the net and doing all those things that are hard on the defending team," said Backstrom, who is tied for the team lead with six points in the series.

This has shown how much the absence of their best penalty killer, Sean Couturier, has meant to the Flyers. He was lost for the series with an upper body injury after taking a clean but hard check from Alex Ovechkin in Game 1.

For the third straight game, Washington scored its first goal on the power play. After the Flyers had all the momentum and the lead on Michael Raffl's goal just 57 seconds into the game, Washington tied it up on Marcus Johansson's first period power-play goal. Johansson has been a major menace all series to the Flyers. That was his fifth point of the series.

The Capitals also received power-play goals from Evgeny Kuznetsov, defenseman John Carlson, Ovechkin and Jay Beagle.

Carlson has three goals this series, all on the power play, and he has personally outscored the Flyers, 3-2. He also is tied with Backstrom with six points.

"They have five really skilled guys, and Overchkin, who can absolutely really shoot it," said Chris VandeVelde, one of the Flyers chief penalty-killing forwards. "There are times we do a great job and times they get a bounce, and we have a misread, and we have to clean that up."

The Caps led just 2-1 entering the third period, but a power-play goal by Kuznetsov less than two minutes into the period seemed to demoralize the Flyers. After that, the Flyers committed several ill-advised penalties, and the game turned into a shooting gallery for the Capitals.

As for the power play, the Flyers are 0 for 20 shooting on their 13 power-play chances.

"It is not going for us, and there is nothing we can do, and you got to make your bounces, keep working and hopefully things will change," forward Wayne Simmonds said of the power player. "This is not going to change easily, and it is up to us to go out there and take responsibility and be the team we can be."

mnarducci@phillynews.com

@sjnard