Blake scored the winner after taking a pass from Taylor Hall in the slot. He put a wrist shot on net that bounced off the glove of Philadelphia goalie Dan Vladar and trickled over the goal line.
“A lot went down on that goal,” Blake said. “‘Slavvo’ (Jaccob Slavin) makes an unbelievable play, and then ‘Stanks’ (Logan Stankoven) middle line drives and pushes those (defensemen) back, and ‘Hallsy’ makes a play that not a lot of people can make there. Fortunately got the bounce and it went in.”
Blake finished the game with two goals and an assist, Hall had three assists, and Frederik Andersen made 15 saves for Carolina, the No. 1 seed out of the Metropolitan Division.
Andersen is the fourth goalie in NHL history to allow two goals or fewer in each of his first eight starts of the playoffs, and the first since Jacques Plante with the St. Louis Blues in 1969.
“He’s so calm and you’re almost just expecting it every night, and that’s unfair to him,” Hall said. “He forces them to almost make the perfect shot or make the perfect play to score on him.”
Tyson Foerster and Alex Bump each scored, and Vladar made 37 saves for Philadelphia, the No. 3 seed out of the Metropolitan.
“I think it was tighter than a 4-0 series,” Flyers captain Sean Couturier said. “If we get a couple bounces our way at key moments, we maybe pull out a win or two. I don’t know how many posts we hit the last couple games. We had our chances. We didn’t capitalize when we needed it.”
Foerster put the Flyers ahead 1-0 at 7:50 of the first period, scoring from the right hash marks with a shot over Andersen’s left pad. It was the forward’s first point in 10 postseason games.
Blake scored his first goal of the game at 12:35 of the second period to tie it 1-1. Hall won a face-off on the right side of the Philadelphia zone, and as Carolina cycled the puck, Blake’s wrist shot from outside the right face-off circle hit Flyers defenseman Jamie Drysdale at the net front and went in.
“In the first intermission, we knew that wasn’t the greatest first period for us,” Hall said. “Us as a line, we want to get to our game and play in their end, forecheck. We know that the strengths of our game, as a team and as a line, is forechecking, disruption and we got to that in the second period.”
