Flyers take down fellow wild-card-contending Capitals

Travis Konecny scored on his 29th birthday and Owen Tippett added a goal and an assist to lift the Philadelphia Flyers to a 4-1 victory over the visiting Washington Capitals on Wednesday.

Samuel Ersson, making just his second start since Jan. 29, finished with 21 saves for the Flyers. Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale also scored and Noah Cates recorded two assists for Philadelphia, now 5-2-0 in its last seven. Both teams are seven points back of the Eastern Conference's second and final wild-card spot.

Ryan Leonard scored the only goal for Washington, which has lost four of its last five contests. Logan Thompson turned aside 18 shots for the Capitals.

Alex Ovechkin had an assist and five shots on goal for Washington. The Russian superstar has failed to score a goal in 11 of his last 12 games.

Leonard opened the scoring with a power-play goal midway through the first period. Following a scrum near the boards, Leonard emerged with the puck and unleashed a wrister from the top of the circle that beat Ersson.

That was the only goal of the first period, but the Flyers struck twice in the second.

Konecny, playing in his second game since missing three contests with an upper-body injury, began by depositing his team-leading 24th goal of the season at 4:23. Travis Sanheim made a pretty cross-ice feed to a wide-open Konecny, who beat Thompson to the short side to tie the game 1-1.

About eight minutes later, Zegras gave Philadelphia the lead with his 22nd of the season. With a step on the defense, Zegras and Tippett skated up the ice, in close quarters, on a 2-on-0 breakaway. Tippett passed to Zegras, who went back to Tippett, whose touch pass to Zegras set up the go-ahead tally.

Drysdale's shot from the high slot gave the Flyers a 3-1 lead at 7:17 of the third period.

Tippett added an empty-netter with 1:03 remaining to clinch the victory.