By Michael McCarthy
So the Flyers finally win a game in this new season, beating the Dallas Stars on the road 6-5 in OT on Claude Giroux’s goal, and you would think coach Craig Berube would be happy, if not ecstatic.
Think again.
After the player interviews ended, Berube seemed oddly pissed off.
“You’re not going to win games 6-5 very often, I’ll tell you right now,” Berube said. “I’m not down. I’m happy we won the game, but there are things that we’ve got to clean up.”
What bothered Berube most was the end of the second period when Dallas scored twice in 56 seconds to swing a game that was tied 2-2 heavily into its favor up 4-2.
A second Flyers’ bench minor of the game for too many men, a questionable call but nevertheless a penalty, led to Dallas pulling ahead 3-2 on a 5-on-4 goal by blueliner Trevor Daley at 18:33.
Fuming with the refs about the call, Berube was more upset when the Stars got another quick goal at 19:29. Flyers defenseman Nick Schultz lost a board battle to Jason Spezza, the puck squirted to Tyler Seguin, who threw the puck to the net of the net for an easy one-time tap-in by Jamie Benn.
“I thought we had a real good period going, then we ended up giving them a power play,” Berube said. “It’s not the right call, but we gotta do a better job of killing it. And then we give up that goal at the end of the period, which really bothered me.
“Our team has to learn to quit chasing games so much. Going down one goal going into the third period, that’s not a huge deal. But going down two goals makes it a lot tougher for ourselves. That’s the kind of stuff that we gotta clean up.”
Berube sent a loud-and-clear message to his team that its play wasn’t acceptable by changing goalies for the third period.
Steve Mason being benched for Ray Emery (photo above) despite not being at fault for any of the Stars’ first four goals inspired much better play as the Flyers scored twice to tie the game 4-4, fell behind, tied it again and then won it OT.
“We did a lot of good things out there tonight,” Berube said. “Had a real good attack. Shot the puck. A lot of opportunities. But we’ve got to clean up some of the mistakes we make. They’re unacceptable.”
