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The Philadelphia Flyers opened a back-to-back home set with the scorching hot Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday. The result: a 7-2 shellacking. Nikita Kucherov extended his point streak to nine straight games and eight in a row with multiple points. The Russian star led the carnage with two goals and two assists. He has seven points (2g, 5a) in two games against the Flyers this season. Gage Goncalves scored twice.
The Flyers spent most of the night chasing the game. Finally, it got out of hand in the third period. Garnet Hathaway (first goal and point of the season) and Owen Tippett (PPG. 14th, minus-four at even strength) scored the Philadelphia goals. Andrei Vasievskiy made 21 saves on 23 shots.
The good
- Even apart from netting his elusive first goal and point of the season, Hathaway played an energetic, engaged game. Other players who turned in numerous solid shifts included Nikita Grebenkin (five hits, one shot) and Rodrigo Abols (one assist, plus-one, one hit). That was not nearly enough with the Flyers playing so shorthanded. Tocchet juggled like combinations throughout the game once Kucherov scored two quick goals.
- The latter half of the first period and most of the second frame were OK for Philadelphia. It was in the third period (four Tampa goals) where the game went completely off the rails.
- The Flyes went 2-for-2 against Tampa’s power play and 1-for-2 on the power play. Unfortunately, Tampa dropped goals on the Flyers at 5-on-5.
The bad
- It was a rough night in terms of ill-timed turnovers that ended up in the net. It was also a tough game for several of the Flyers’ young players: Denver Barkey (minus-three, 0 shots, 14:30 TOI) and Matvei Michkov (-3, two giveaways, two shots, 17:10 TOI) in particular.
- Tocchet wasted little time breaking up the starting line with Trevor Zegras (-2, 0 shots, one charged giveaways, 0-for-3 on faceoffs) with Michkov and Dvorak.
- Tampa is a very good east-west team, especially players like Kucherov and Brayden Point. The Flyers had a 23-14 scoring chance deficit. Additionally, Philly gave up nearly double the high-danger chances they generated. That’s usually going to produce ugly results against Tampa.
The ugly
- Samuel Ersson’s confidence and body language are at the lowest ebb of his NHL career to date.On this night, he stopped just 16 of 23 shots. His season GAA rose to 3.35 and his save percentage sank to .858. None of the seven goals he allowed were outright soft but few were unstoppable. Morever, one would be hard pressed to remember any clutch or timely stops when needed. To his credit, the Swedish goaltender was willing to talk to the media after the game. However, the team public relations department decided to make the player unavailable.
- The Flyers, one again got clobbered on faceoffs (17 won, 29 lost, 37 percent).
- Tampa’s Kucherov scored on his team’s first two shots of the game.
- The third period was beyond ugly. Actually, ugly is too mild of an adjective.
Flyers postgame reaction
Head coach Rick Tocchet
Team captain Sean Couturier
Phantoms stage comeback win in Springfield
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms (19-11-4) staged a three-goal comeback in the periods to earn a 3-2 road win over the Springfield Thunderbirds (13-15-6) on Saturday night. The Phantoms now have a six-game point streak (5-0-1).
Trailing 2-0 at the second intermission, the Phantoms rallied for goals by Lane Pederson (13th) and Christian Kyrou (PPG, 5th) to tie the game. Finally, with 12 seconds left in regulation, Anthony Richard (9th) tallied the game winner. Carson Bjarnason earned the win with 14 saves on 16 shots. The Phantoms held a 9-2 shot advantage in the fateful third period.
