Rich Hofmann: It wasn't pretty, but Boucher likes outcome for Flyers
MR. BOOSH'S Wild Ride ended in victory, finally, in overtime. In a game that featured some great saves, a dizzying series of emotional swings and one awful goal that went bump in the night, goaltender Brian Boucher was the Flyers, and the Flyers were him. And they all live to do it again on Monday.
MR. BOOSH'S Wild Ride ended in victory, finally, in overtime.
In a game that featured some great saves, a dizzying series of emotional swings and one awful goal that went bump in the night, goaltender Brian Boucher was the Flyers, and the Flyers were him. And they all live to do it again on Monday.
Simon Gagne, in his first game after surgery, playing on a still-mending broken toe, made the feel-good headlines with his game-winning goal in overtime. But it was Boucher who defined them, good and bad and persistent most of all. Trailing in their playoff series by 3-0 to the Boston Bruins, with nothing to lose but a reputation for inconsistency, the Flyers and Boucher played what was, in many ways, their worst game of the series. Yet it is the only game that they have won.
(Explanations to come in another lifetime.)
They blew a 3-1 lead in the second period - and they still won. They blew a 4-3 lead with 31.5 seconds left in the third period - and they still won. We civilians can only imagine what it was like in that Flyers dressing room during the 15-minute intermission before the overtime.
"You know what?" Boucher said. "We just said that we had to forget what just happened. It's disappointing, but we couldn't sit there and be all upset about it. We had to regroup and play in the overtime."
It was an easy thing for Boucher to say in a happy, relieved Flyers dressing room after the game was over. But isn't that regrouping a much harder thing to accomplish than it is to say?
"Yeah," Boucher said. "But when you play professional sports, that's what you're trained to do. We talk about having short-term memory, good and bad, and you have to forget about it and keep plugging away. That's part of persevering. That's what this group did tonight. And because of it, we've been rewarded with seeing another day. Hopefully, we can keep running with it and get back here for Game 6."
In the middle of the second period, Boucher suffered one of those moments that makes you cringe and wonder why anyone would want to be a goaltender. With the Flyers ahead by 3-1, the Bruins' Michael Ryder fired a puck wide of the net, and a couple of things were happening at once: The rebound was going to come back in front, and two players, the Flyers' Braydon Coburn and the Bruins' Vladimir Sobotka, were about to convene in the same area.
Boucher moved to the side of the net and tried to control the rebound. Then the puck somehow got between his legs - which was scary but not fatal. The fatal part came when Boucher, without seeing the puck behind him, managed to kick it into his goal with an inadvertent little flick of his skate.
"I've got to forget about that," Boucher said. "My intentions were to go freeze the puck. I'm not sure if the guy whacked my stick as I was going to freeze it. But it happens. You see fluky goals from the corners. It happens all the time.
"You've just to to stay with it, and this group stayed with it. They stuck behind me and kept plugging away."
Boucher was spectacular in the Flyers' first-round series against New Jersey, the reason they won so easily in five games. He has been solid in this series overall, often the victim of excessive traffic and deflections in front of him.
That goal was a nightmare, though. And while he saw a team that stuck with it, other teammates saw a team that kind of backed off a little after it got its 3-1 lead, and then even more after that goal got it to 3-2.
"It's hard to say," Boucher said. "I'll take responsibility for the second goal. Obviously, it would have been nice to keep that two-goal lead going into the third. It was kind of a fluke play there. But if we did [let down], let it be a lesson learned. We got away with it tonight. We stayed with it. We showed a lot of character coming in here in overtime after a disappointing finish in regulation. A lot of people could have just packed it in, but we stayed together and got a big overtime win.
"And we live to see another day."
Rational analysis of this series has been useless. The Flyers played well enough to win either of the first two games, but lost. They played their best game in the third game but lost again. Then they played like a circus act at times last night, but they won.
"I feel like we had nothing to lose tonight," Boucher said. "We were down 3-0. I don't think the pressure was on us tonight, to be quite honest with you.
"[The Bruins] still feel good about themselves, I'm sure, going home, up 3-1. But it's a big game for us. If we win that game and get it back here to Game 6, we'll be feeling pretty good about ourselves."
With that, the Flyers and Brian Boucher survive. And after this one, predictions are now completely meaningless. *
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