April 25, 2026
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
Porter Martone and the Flyers couldn't fully crack Arturs Silovs on Saturday night.
The brooms will have to go away, and the handshake line will have to wait.
The Flyers lost Game 4 to the Penguins, 4-2, Saturday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena, and another amped up South Philadelphia crowd that was ready to celebrate something big was left hanging.
The Flyers are still leading the first-round, best-of-seven Stanley Cup Playoff series, 3-1, and still need just a win to move on, but now they'll have to go back to Pittsburgh to try and get it with Game 5 on Monday night.
"We'll regroup," Travis Konecny said postgame. "We've played one now that guys can feed off of, and we know what it's like now to play in that game to try to close it.
"Just fix our mistakes, head into the next game."
The energy and physicality were there from the word go.
Pittsburgh's Erik Karlsson put an early shot on, then tried to split through Travis Sanheim and Rasmus Ristolainen, looking to crash in on Dan Vladar in the crease for a rebound. Vladar gloved the puck and froze it, and Sanheim and Ristolainen took exception, with both reaching arms around Karlsson and tossing him down to the ice.
Sean Couturier crushed Noel Acciari along the wall by the Penguins' bench as a pass wrapped around to the forward, eliciting "COOOTS" chants from a building of nearly 20,000 that had gotten used to the Flyers – and their fourth-line of hard-checking veterans between Couturier, Garnet Hathaway, and Luke Glendening, especially – throwing around the body and finishing hits to their advantage, which also gave a shot in the arm to the crowd without fail.
Throwing the body early on in Philly 💥
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2026
📺: Watch Game 4 LIVE on Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/1yTsMKXhWr
But the Penguins weren't forced onto their heels as easily this time.
There was a desperation to them with their season on the line, which head coach Rick Tocchet said he expected as much of earlier in the day, noting that his team would have to match that in some way.
Gradually, there was some sense of control again for a veteran Pittsburgh group, too.
Denver Barkey got sent to the box for a high stick that no one could refute when he was battling Samuel Girard in front of the Pittsburgh net. Then, off that immediate draw, Sidney Crosby took the puck back to Karlsson and dropped down to buy that little bit of space that he needed.
Karlsson tossed the puck back down, and Crosby fired a shot that chipped off the glove of Vladar and in to give the Penguins a 1-0 lead before the end of the first period.
SID THE KID IS ON THE BOARD 🐧 pic.twitter.com/NQ4VzbdqKf
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2026
Coming back out for the second, Vladar got caught in a mental lapse.
The Flyers' goaltender went behind his net to retrieve a puck, but froze on the decision to pass, and never saw Pittsburgh's Rickard Rakell closing in.
Rakell sealed off the boards to stop it and take possession, then swept around just enough in front to nudge the puck into the open net, leaving the Flyers in a 2-0 hole.
"It was my bad of hitting him," Vladar said afterward of the play. "You do it in practice, you do it 20 times, 20 times it goes past him...This is just what it is."
RICKARD RAKELL STRIPS THE PUCK FROM DAN VLADAR AND DOUBLES THE PENGUINS LEAD 🚨 pic.twitter.com/L6cowe5Rts
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2026
It started to temper a building that wanted to go crazy again, and was only further sobered by one of the Flyers' greatest weaknesses all season; the power play.
The Flyers let two runs with a man-advantage amount to nothing through the first period, and then a too many men on the ice call gave them a golden setup to try and get back in it.
Their best shot on that try, however, was on a net front rebound to Tyson Foerster that he slid just wide of the right post and Arturs Silovs outstretched pad.
For the night, the Flyers went 0-for-3 on the power play, while the Penguins went 1-for-3, which wasn't much better, but still made the difference.
So did Kris Letang's blast early into the third period, after Barkey parked himself in front of the net to knock in a pass inside from Trevor Zegras before the end of the second, which, at that point, got the Flyers on the board and gave the arena a badly needed jolt to get back on its feet.
DENVER BARKEY GIVES THE FLYERS SOME LIFE IN GAME 4 ‼️ pic.twitter.com/Mx7GoRBbNr
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2026
Konecny's own missile past Silovs and to the back of the net seven minutes into the third also kept the crowd with some hope until the final horn, but ultimately, Philadelphia ran out of time to close the gap.
TRAVIS KONECNY ANSWERS RIGHT BACK FOR THE FLYERS 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/Exy9oJz6ci
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2026
They pressed with the empty net and an extra attacker with the clock running down, and Connor Dewar broke away with the puck to put the game out of reach.
Connor Dewar's empty-netter will keep the Penguins alive in Round One 🚨 pic.twitter.com/MzXGZBWaJH
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2026
It's the Flyers' first loss of the playoffs, but if there's one thing that this young team will want to carry forward from the regular season, it's their ability to flush defeats quickly and reset.
It did them wonders down the stretch as they were sprinting to clinch, like when they fell to Detroit and Columbus when they were neck and neck with both of them in the race before each bottomed out.
It'll have to keep working for them now.
"We talk about every game being different," Tocchet said Saturday morning. "There's tons of pressure on us. There's been a ton of pressure on us the last two months, so we've been trying to deal with it the way we're trying to deal with it. You just gotta stay mentally in this game. You can't worry about tomorrow, [or] what ifs. You can't play that game."
There's only the next one. So on to it.
"If somebody told you guys before the series we're gonna be up 3-1 after four games, you guys wouldn't believe us, so we are good," Vladar asserted to the cluster of reporters and cameras huddled around him in the locker room. "Nothing's changing for us. [We're] still being positive in here. They are a really good team, you know? It's not easy to win four in a row against a team like that.
"So yeah, we are fine here."
SIGN UP HERE to receive the PhillyVoice Sports newsletter
Follow Nick on Twitter: @itssnick
Follow Nick on Bluesky: @itssnick
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
