[AUDIO]: Claude Giroux: “I Guess We Thought We Were Gonna Walk All Over NJ”

So...

Remember that time I told you to hold the Flyer hate after the team's 3-1 loss in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semis that effectively ended the Orange and Black's postseason push? Basically saying that, you don't really, truly, totally know the top-to-bottom mentality of the locker room (because you've never been in the locker room, and, even if you have, it's only for a few flashes at a time, which, really isn't enough exposure to ascertain that info) and without that intimate familiarity of where their heads were at, you really can't make value judgments about the Flyers psyche and how it played into the loss, which, if it were that they did something pretty egregiously heinous by the sport's standards -- say, openly admitting they looked past a team? -- you'd have every right to bury them appropriately?

Forget all that. Grab your shovels.

At least for Claude Giroux. Because while other Flyers said -- repeat: they said -- they acknowledged and deferred and feared the Devils coming in, Giroux couldn't exactly muster the post-game homage you expect a team that was run up and down the ice and right out of The Chase might. Kind of ironic, that G was the only guy to say he didn't think much of New Jersey. 'Cause it's pretty tough to think much of him, the guy who got himself shelved because he couldn't control his childish frustration, right about now.

Said Giroux: "I think we were thinking we were gonna walk all over New Jersey. It's kind of our fault a little bit, and I guess we gotta learn from it."

Needless to say. (Even though they should've learned from it last series, when Kimmo Timmonen said the same thing of the Penguins that wouldn't go away.) And maybe they did.

Said Scott Hartnell: "No, we knew they were a good team coming into it. We knew that they were fast and hungry and (had) one of the best -- probably the best goalie that's ever played the game. We knew we weren't gonna get up 3-0 in the series like we did against Pitt(sburgh). A lotta coulda, woulda, shouldas in a series like this. (The loss is) heartbreaking."

As for Giroux's post-game admission? It's reputation-shattering.

Because you have to remember, what forever etches in granite these players immediate legacies from each singular season is their commentary immediately after it ends. Here? Yeah, Giroux basically used a jackhammer when he should've been a little more delicate and careful and mindful of the implications of what he was saying, going instead with a chisel.

Guess he can learn from that, too.