There is really not too much the Flyers could have done differently to change the outcome of last night's 1-0 loss in Buffalo that evened the series at two games apiece. The Flyers played well enough to have won, but the bottom line in the playoffs is execution and not merely effort.

There were sequences where I thought they held to puck a little too long and perhaps over-passed, looking for perfect plays that just weren't there. But the Flyers also had their share of scoring chances in close against Ryan Miller and the Sabres' goalie was just better.

At the other end of the ice, Brian Boucher was once again excellent. He deserved a better fate. I thought Boosh faced more -- and tougher -- legitimate scoring chances than Sergei Bobrovsky faced in Game 1. The Sabres had numerous odd man rushes on counterattacks and, while the Philadelphia skaters did a good job at hustling on the backcheck, Boucher deserves the lion's share of the credit for handling the chances flawlessly.

It would not be playoff hockey if the two teams did not end up hating one another by this point of the series. There was no shortage of scrums, trash talk and cheapshots -- both ways -- last night. Blatant penalties got missed, marginal ones got called. In particular, I thought referee Francois St. Laurent made a brutal call in assessing a five-minute elbowing major to Mike Richards on the play where Patrick Kaleta came at him on the boards.

Special teams ended up be a non-factor in the outcome, as neither the Sabres (0-for-4) nor the Flyers (0-for-3) could generate much on the power play. But, with the Flyers chasing the game with a 1-0 deficit much of the game, it did not help that they had to spend 9:41 of the game killing penalties. Even in killing off the Richards' penalty at the start of the third period, the Flyers' lost nearly five minutes off the clock. The Flyers had 4:41 worth of power play time in the game. This was the first game in the series in which neither club had a two-man advantage at any point.

On the injury front, I would not expect much -- if any -- reliable information to be released today about Jeff Carter's apparent knee injury. He's officially day-to-day. Meanwhile, it is looking more and more as if Chris Pronger will return to the lineup for tomorrow's game.

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