"Their goalie won them that game, that's for sure," Flyers center Jeff Carter said.
But Fleury's stellar performance is not the reason the Flyers are on the brink of an early exit from this postseason. A hot goaltender is going to pop up and steal a game here and there in any playoff series. Fleury, who allowed five goals just 48 hours earlier in Game 3, gets credit for just one win.
"Now we've given ourselves zero margin for error," Flyers coach John Stevens said.
The reality is, his team had already accomplished that in three distinct ways before Fleury robbed them of a game they otherwise played well enough to win.
First, the Flyers blew home-ice advantage with two dreadful losses to the New York Rangers in their final regular-season games. Even an overtime loss in either of those games would have delivered the single point necessary for the Flyers to be hosting two of three remaining games in this series.
If winning three in a row against the Penguins is an order taller than Derian Hatcher standing on Hal Gill's shoulders, winning two of them in Pittsburgh borders on the impossible. That measly unearned point was the first falling domino in the Flyers' undoing.
The second was their appalling performance in Game 1. After last night's loss, the Flyers talked about "deserving a better fate" based on their performance. And there was some truth in that, even though goals are not awarded for high energy or creating good chances.
"At the end of the day, you only score one goal, it's going to be hard to win," Stevens said.
If the Flyers had played Game 1 the way they've played since, this whole series might be different. Handing Pittsburgh home ice and a one-game series lead was awfully generous.
