Philadelphia Flyers beat Boston Bruins 4-1 in NHL playoffs

Carter Hart stopped 34 shots, and the Philadelphia Flyers opened the NHL expanded playoffs seeding round with a 4-1 win over the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Boston Bruins on Sunday.

Hart is 11 days shy of his 22nd birthday in becoming the youngest goalie in Flyers history to win a playoff game. Michael Raffl had a goal and assist, while Nate Thompson, Philippe Myers and Scott Laughton also scored for the Flyers.

With 16 teams competing in best-of-five elimination series, the top four teams in each conference are playing a round-robin series to determine seeding entering the first round of the playoffs. Philadelphia finished fourth in the Eastern Conference standings, and the Bruins first.

Chris Wagner scored for the Bruins, who came out flat and were without starting goalie Tuukka Rask, who was deemed unfit to play.

Jaroslav Halak stopped 25 shots starting in place of the Vezina Trophy finalist, who broke a finger on his left hand before the start of training camp.

Rask was healthy enough to start in Boston’s 4-1 exhibition game loss to Columbus on Wednesday. He allowed three goals on 23 shots over 30 minutes, before giving way to Halak.

Hart closed the season going 9-2 and allowing 21 goals, and surpassed Pete Peeters, who was nearly 23 in winning Game 1 of Philadelphia's preliminary series over Edmonton in 1980.

The Flyers were among the NHL’s hottest teams before the season was paused in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. Philadelphia had won nine straight before a 2-0 loss to Boston on March 10, the two teams’ final game before play was stopped.