WASHINGTON — As the Flyers found in the regular season many times, chasing a game doesn’t allow for much wiggle room.

Chasing it without the team’s best defensive center against the best team in the NHL is a recipe for disaster.

Not only did the Flyers drop Game 1 to the Washington Capitals 2-0, Sean Couturier’s status is up in the air.

At 11:13 of the second period, Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin stapled Couturier along the boards. He got up favoring his left forearm and went immediately to the locker room. Before the final buzzer he was in the hallway wearing a sling. He will be re-evaluated Friday. According to a report from CSNPhilly.com, he is done for the series.

“All I know is we had to go without him for the rest of the game tonight,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “I won’t go any further than that.”

He was missed on the penalty kill a couple minutes later when the Caps had their third man advantage of the game thanks to a delay-of-game call against Brandon Manning and John Carlson finally beat Steve Mason.

The Flyers goalie was fantastic, stopping 29 shots on the night, but couldn’t get to the Carlson slapshot, that was deflected off of Chris VandeVelde and beat the goalie between his left pad and blocker.

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