David Pastrnak, who scored the first two goals of his career, was the Boston Bruins’ best player in a 3-1 win over the Flyers, who felt they were no worse for wear to begin the second half of their season.
“Well we weren’t gonna go 41-0 were we?” coach Craig Berube said sarcastically. “I guess you never know. It’s disappointing for sure, but we’re gonna stay positive. We have to.”
That’s tough to do considering the Bruins are teetering on the edge of the Eastern Conference’s last playoff spot and got verbally torn to shreds by the owner’s son this week, calling the team, “a complete failure.”
Oh, and then there’s the fact that the Flyers don’t know what’s going on with goalie Steve Mason. On his fifth save of the game, a routine right pad save on Craig Cunningham, goalie Steve Mason planted his left foot to get back up out of the butterfly and instead keeled over and needed help getting off the ice.
It wasn’t completely unexpected.
Mason had an MRI on Wednesday because a “tweak” bothered him. It flared up again Thursday night in an overtime win over Washington, but he practiced Friday and said he felt fine.
“I don’t think it can get worse,” Mason said after Friday’s practice. “The training staff is confident that this isn’t something we need to worry about or anything.”
Assuming the tweak is what flared up Saturday, they were apparently mistaken and the injury was worse than what the Flyers thought.
“Yeah, it looks like he’s in a lot of pain,” captain Claude Giroux said. “Obviously, we want him to get better. Like I said, he’s a big part of our team, but at the same time, we (have) got to keep playing.”
Mason will be re-evaluated Sunday and the Flyers will have a better idea of just how serious the apparent knee injury is, but it sure looks like Rob Zepp will have his second call-up from the American Hockey League.
In the interim, Ray Emery will probably be “the guy” for the Flyers.
