PHILADELPHIA - The merrily-we-roll-along Bruins kept on rollin' last night, breaking a 1-1 deadlock with a couple of goals 35 seconds apart in the third period and pinning a 3-1 loss on the Flyers before a sellout crowd of 19,748 at the
Michael Ryder, David Krejci, and Dennis Wideman had the goals, handing the Bruins their third straight win, their 38th of the season, and further strengthening their clawhold on the No. 1 spot in the NHL standings - East, West, to infinity and beyond.
Can anything derail these defensively minded Bruins, who stick to coach Claude Julien's game plan like a pack of paparazzi hot after Paris Hilton? Well, maybe. But the Rangers couldn't do it Saturday (a 1-0 Bruins victory). The crumbling Canadiens couldn't do it Sunday in Montreal (a 3-1 Boston victory). And the Flyers, their lineup decimated by a midwinter virus, could only hang with them for 40 minutes before getting the spoked-B stamped up and down their backsides.
"We've been playing good defense," said goalie Tim Thomas, noting the three most recent wins. "For a while there, we were a little loosey-goosey, I guess you'd say . . . teams were really starting to pressure us. But we've been taking control of games, starting from our own end with better breakouts and stuff."
The Flyers, even without the sidelined likes of Mike Richards, Braydon Coburn, and Scottie Upshall, put up a decent fight in a scoreless first period, outshooting the Bruins, 14-7. That's not uncommon at home, where the Flyers like to feed off of the emotion of the crowd. Had it not been for a sensational stop by Thomas at 4:21 of the first period, with the Flyers working with a power play, the outcome could have been different.
Randy Jones first hit Thomas with a long-range slapper, one the goalie lost in the crowd of bodies that jammed the slot. The rebound went into the left circle, where Jeff Carter snapped off a shot that looked destined to land somewhere in the wide-open left half of the net. However, Thomas scurried back and appeared first to cut it down with his paddle before smothering it in his midsection and dropping into the crease to stop the clock.
"Thorny said it was a good paddle save," said Thomas, referring to teammate Shawn Thornton. "But to be honest, I didn't have the luxury of seeing the replay - and I still haven't. The skill on that goal was falling down, and you have to make yourself soft when you fall like that . . . and that's not easy for a guy with the nickname 'Tank'. If you don't make that soft drop, there's a chance you just go right into the net with it."
