Philadelphia Flyers captain Claude Giroux said he and his teammates were left with a bitter taste in their mouths by their Game 7 loss to the New York Islanders on Saturday night.
"Right now, it's very frustrating," Giroux told NHL.com's Tom Gulitti. "We like our team. We like the pieces we have. Frustration is high right now. We're going in the right direction, but it's one game. We win this game and we're going to the conference finals."
The Flyers won Games 5 and 6 to force the winner-take-all contest but were blanked 4-0 and managed only 16 shots on goal with their season on the line.
Head coach Alain Vigneault echoed Giroux's comments.
"I really liked our start to tonight's game," Vigneault said. "I thought the first six minutes, we were on our toes, we were making plays, we were playing in their end. And then after they scored that first goal, we just never had the same bounce or the same pop.
"Obviously, it's very disappointing to our whole group."
The Flyers finished fourth in the Eastern Conference with a 41-21-7 regular-season record. They earned the top seed in the playoffs by sweeping the round-robin portion of the return to play.
