Goalies not the only reason for Flyers playoff demise

BOSTON - It wasn't goaltending that finally did in these Flyers. Not their own and not Boston's. A sweep as one-sided and as uncompetitive as this requires a system-wide failure.

The fog that descended on this team for the final month of the regular season lifted for just a couple of first-round games against Buffalo and descended again for the entire second round. The Flyers managed maybe a couple periods of really good hockey over these four games. Not nearly enough and not nearly acceptable.

"We never seemed to get into the series," coach Peter Laviolette said. "We never got into it, never got a win."

They played soft. They played sloppy. They were outhustled and outworked and outhit. They simply failed to show up for two of the games, getting beaten by a combined 12-4 in Games 1 and 3 - and 20-7 overall. A year after their incredible comeback from being down by three games to none against this same team, there was no sign of the heart or the desperation or the intensity that distinguished the 2010 Flyers.

That was a team to remember. This is a team best forgotten.

With their season at stake Friday night, they managed to get just 23 shots on goal against Tim Thomas. They went more than 14 minutes without a shot at one point. If their plan was to lull Thomas to sleep, it didn't work.

We'll never know whether Chris Pronger would have made a difference in this series. The big defenseman returned from a hand injury to lift the team to wins in two elimination games against the Sabres. Then he got hurt again in Game 1 and never returned.

Given the gap in effort, energy, and talent between these teams, it is doubtful Pronger would have been enough to turn this thing. But maybe his presence would have made it just that much harder for his teammates, especially the turnover-happy defensemen, to play as listlessly as they did. Maybe.

"You see the impact a guy like [Zdeno] Chara has on the other side," Laviolette said. "You don't have your big guy in there who plays the same style and the same way, you miss him. I've never been one to use injuries as an excuse."

And we'll never know what might have been if Laviolette hadn't been so quick to start the goalie-go-round spinning.

After Game 2 against Buffalo, I wrote that staying with rookie Sergei Bobrovsky was the only move that made sense. This is worth noting so the following does not appear to be an easy second guess of Laviolette. It was a first guess.

The thinking then was that Bobrovsky was the best candidate to get hot and carry the team for a long playoff run. The 22-year-old rookie was barely getting the feel of Stanley Cup playoff intensity when Laviolette went with Brian Boucher in Game 3. Since then, the whole goalie situation devolved into a farce.

Lost, too, was the chance for Bobrovsky to get more valuable playoff experience.

Again: The team wasn't nearly good enough in front Boucher or Bobrovksy. But it's also hard to gauge the impact that wobbly goaltending has on a team's confidence. Just as great goaltending can erase mistakes and allow players to relax and takes some chances - witness the Bruins in all four of these games - shaky play there can undermine everyone.

"You get down early, and you're trying to fight back almost every game, it's tough," forward Scott Hartnell said.

The Flyers, who let the Bruins knock them around and take the puck right off their sticks all series, looked like a team playing without that sense of security.

No doubt in the days ahead we'll learn about various players getting surgery for the nagging injuries that plagued them throughout and that were kept secret by the paranoid organization. Captain Mike Richards, who didn't look right throughout the postseason, is a leading candidate.

Ultimately, the better team won this series. Boston absorbed the humiliation of blowing that 3-0 lead last May and made some smart changes. The Bruins added depth and toughness. Thomas returned to his spot as the starting goalie. That team played with determination and a nasty streak. The Flyers did not.

It is fair to ask whether this team needs some kind of change in its core group. Richards and Jeff Carter have been the two pieces everything else was built around. But it is clear that Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk are the real budding stars on this team.

Could Carter be trade bait for a legit No. 1 goalie? Is Richards really the right personality type to be the captain? Did this team's fade over the last two months indicate that it is tuning Laviolette out?

Tough questions get asked when you miss the playoffs. When you make them and don't show up, the questions are even tougher.