Sabres 4-Goal 1st Levels Flyers

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

If you didn't know any better, you would have thought the Flyers were on a Thanksgiving hangover at the start of Wednesday's game on Thanksgiving eve. Less than 10 minutes into the game, the Flyers were down 3-0. A late goal in the first essentially sealed their fate.

The Flyers struggled at the start and were massively outplayed early, but managed to trim a 4-0 lead to a 4-2 margin, but never any closer in a 5-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres.

The Sabres came out flying in the first and struck early and often. A shot by Jason Pominville left a big rebound that Jeff Skinner was easily able to knock in to open the scoring at 3:38.

Less than two minutes later, Tage Thompson took advantage of a Flyers turnover and skated around Radko Gudas before tucking one in past Alex Lyon for a 2-0 lead at 5:20.

On the power play less than four minutes later, Evan Rodrigues pumped in a rebound out of a net-mouth scramble to make it 3-0.

The Flyers spent the rest of the period essentially weathering the storm, before a late chance extended the Buffalo lead. Johan Larsson came up the wing and fired a shot that beat Lyon short side, making it 4-0 with 7.9 seconds left in the period. Off the ensuing face-off, Scott Laughton became the first Flyer to drop the gloves this season, taking on Larsson.

Lyon was pulled after the first period for Cal Pickard. He stopped eight of 12 shots in the opening period.

The Flyers started to trim into the lead in the second with goals by Claude Giroux and Wayne Simmonds, narrowing the margin to 4-2 after 40 minutes.

The Flyers let an early third-period power play get away and never got any closer in the game. With under two minutes to play, Buffalo iced the game with an empty-net goal by Sam Reinhart.

Carter Hutton stopped 23 shots in the win.

The Flyers are back on the ice on Friday afternoon to face the New York Rangers.

Box Score

Scoring Summary

1st Period

• BUF Jeff Skinner (15) (Jason Pominville) 3:38
• BUF Tage Thompson (2) (Vladimir Sobotka, Kyle Okposo) 5:20
• BUF Evan Rodrigues (1) PP (Sam Reinhart, Rasmus Dahlin) 8:55
• BUF Johan Larsson (1) (Rodrigues, Rasmus Ristolainen) 19:52 

2nd Period

• PHI Claude Giroux (8) (Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny) 5:26
• PHI Wayne Simmonds (9) (Jordan Weal, Travis Sanheim) 13:51

3rd Period

• BUF Sam Reinhart (3) EN (Jack Eichel) 18:22

Game Statistics