WASHINGTON — The Philadelphia Flyers have rallied around a unified battle cry, one that basically suggests that the troops have to dig a little deeper in these injury-plagued times.
So on the day they found out that the NHL’s leading scorer, Claude Giroux, is out indefinitely with a concussion, the Flyers received key offensive contributions from some old standbys along with a newcomer to the scoring sheet.
It all added up to a 5-1 win over the Washington Capitals at the Verizon Center, extending the Flyers winning streak to six games.
"I thought it was one of our better games, just complete from start to finish," Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said.
The Flyers (19-7-3) continue to lead the Eastern Conference with 41 points.
"We have a good team," said defenseman Kimmo Timonen. "It doesn’t matter how many guys we are missing I think we showed today we can play pretty good hockey against a pretty good team out there."
Everybody from Laviolette to each of the players talked about the importance of carrying a little extra offensive weight in the absence of Giroux.
And the Flyers did plenty of heavy lifting.
Five different players scored.
It’s probably no coincidence that Scott Hartnell has scored in every game of this six-game winning streak.
Hartnell was one of the players who talked about picking up the slack for his injured linemate Giroux and he did exactly that, scoring the game’s first goal on a wrist shot — the 200th of his career — that was an indication of the difficult night Capitals goalie Tomas Vokoun would have.
It was a soft goal, but the Flyers weren’t complaining.
In fact, Vokoun was pulled after two periods with the Flyers holding a 4-0 lead.
The Flyers put things away with three second-period goals, the first scored by an unlikely source.
Defenseman Marc-Andre Bourdon scored on a wrist shot inside the blue line on a pass from Zac Rinaldo. Jody Shelley provided a screen and it initially appeared as if he tipped it in, but the puck apparently went off the stick of Washington’s Mathieu Perreault.
"I was happy but I didn’t even know it was me who scored," Bourdon said. "I shot the puck and thought maybe it tipped off one of their guys or thought maybe Shell scored."
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