Trevor Zegras, Rasmus Ristolainen, Nick Seeler and Noah Cates all scored their first career playoff goals to guide the Philadelphia Flyers to a 5-2 home victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday and a three-games-to-none series lead.
After capturing Games 1 and 2 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinal matchup in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia scored three times in the second period of this one, and Dan Vladar took care of the rest with 28 saves.
Owen Tippett had the other goal for the Flyers. Cates and Zegras each added an assist, and Jamie Drysdale, Sean Couturier and Noah Juulsen logged two assists apiece.
Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson scored for Pittsburgh, which needs to win Saturday in Philadelphia to save its season. Stuart Skinner made 24 saves for the Penguins.
“We have to turn the page. We’ve gotta win one — we’ve got to win a game. And that’s gotta be our focus,” Penguins coach Dan Muse said after the game. “We’ll turn the page and we’ll focus on that one game to get this series back to Pittsburgh.”
Pittsburgh opened the scoring 4:18 into the contest on a power play. Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust and Malkin connected on a tic-tac-toe passing sequence that ended with Malkin’s tally from the doorstep.
That was the only goal of the first period, but the middle session saw plenty of offense — all from Philadelphia — and a significant amount of physical play.
The second-period scoring began with Zegras’ power-play goal on a one-timer from the right circle at 5:18.
At the time, there were 11 players in the penalty boxes. Following a scrum on the previous shift, all 10 skaters were assessed roughing penalties with Rust getting an extra minor that had to be served by a teammate.
Less than four minutes later, the teams were back at full strength when Ristolainen scored from the right circle after a nice feed from Juulsen. Ristolainen received the puck with space and beat Skinner through the five-hole.
About two minutes later, Seeler’s shot from the blue line got through traffic and found the back of the net.
“It’s great. Any time you can get depth-scoring, that’s a good thing. It’s always good to get those goals,” Seeler said.
Pittsburgh pressured in the third period, which turned out to be an eventful stanza for Vladar. He lost a skate blade early in the session and then hurt his right arm on a collision with Rust a couple minutes later.
The injury appeared to affect Vladar, as he promptly allowed a power-play goal when Karlsson’s shot snuck just under his arm with 10:21 remaining.
However, Philadelphia regained the momentum with a power-play goal less than three minutes later when Cates took a pass on the doorstep, reverse-pivoted into the crease and lifted a forehand under the crossbar.
Tippett’s empty-netter with 1:12 left put an exclamation point on the victory.
–Field Level Media
