All but Horton hit ice for Bruins practice before Game 2
PHILADELPHIA — A 7-3 romp in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Flyers didn’t earn the Bruins a day off.
Boston hit the ice at the Wells Fargo Center for three quarters of an hour today in preparation for tomorrow night’s Game 2.
Only forward Nathan Horton was excused, and his off day was an accident. Head coach Claude Julien said that just before going out to the ice, Horton’s rivets on one of his skates popped and they wouldn’t have been fixed in time to be of use to the Bruins. So Horton worked out off the ice and will skate Monday.
Out in Voorhees, N.J., the Flyers held an optional practice and none of their regular players skated. Certainly they must have been working diligently behind the scenes to cure what plagued them in a mistake-filled Game 1. After all, Flyers head coach Peter Laviolette left no area of his team’s game blame-free for the defeat.
“If he said they had to be better in all areas, they’re going to adjust in all areas,” said Julien. “We expect them, we know they’re going to come out a lot better. There’s no doubt there. There’s no secret to that and we just have to be ready for it. I think we’re anticipating it, we know what’s coming, as a hockey club you have to be ready to face that. We’re just going to have to be as good as we can be tomorrow and come out there the better team.”
I kind of wonder if Laviolette and Company underestimated the Krejci line based on their underwhelming performance in the first round. Though this will pain some people, I think credit also has to be given to Julien for making the correct in-shift adjustments to get Krejci away from Richards. Clearly the Flyers blew some shifts on their own (like the goal immediately after the tv timeout), but that wasn’t always the case. The Bruins also made life more difficult by the fact that the Bergeron line was hitting on all cylinders as well. If both lines stay consistent going forward, even a better Flyers effort (which is all but inevitable) will still leave Philadelphia with its hands full when it comes to deciding where to commit its best players.
Glad Horton wasn’t sick.
You’d think the Flyers would have been skating today, but maybe the coaches wanted to review tape and come up with a better plan of attack since what they did on Sat failed. Laviolette is a good coach though and I think he is often good at the match up game (which is why Sat. kind of shocked me). I do think the Flyers have offensive talent in their forward corps but not so sure they have the defensive talent to shut down all four lines and all four of our lines rolle with pretty strong defense.