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The Philadelphia Flyers (4-9-4) were looking to build from their best performance of the season against the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday. However, they fell behind while missing a multitude of scoring chances and fell short in their comeback attempt, losing 4-2 at the Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Minnesota leaped out to a quick 2-0 lead in the first period, separated by 31 seconds. Matt Boldy opened the scoring with a wrist shot through traffic following some very slick puck movement. Michael McCarron would benefit from some puck luck on his goal. Linemate Blake Coleman backhanded a pass that deflected off of Porter Martone’s skate right onto his stick and McCarron put it home.
The Wild spread their lead to three goals only 42 seconds into the second period on a Joel Erikson-Ek goal. Boldy took advantage of a Jamie Drysdale pass that hit an official and kept the puck in the zone. The Wild winger shot the puck with Erikson-Ek closing and the center easily parked the puck past Flyers goalie Dan Vladar.
Philadelphia survived a series of penalties afterwards and were able to cut the Wild’s lead when Tyson Foerster scored on a deflection of a Drysdale point shot. The Flyers kept their foot on the gas in the early third period and got a power-play goal from Denver Barkey to make it 3-2.
However, Minnesota stabilized in the later half of the third period and didn’t prevented the Flyers from more threatening chances. Danila Yurov put the game away with an empty net goal with 1:24 remaining.
For an in-depth recap, read it here.
The Good
- Matvei Michkov continues to be an Flyers offensive driver. His assist on Tyson Foerster’s second period is good for 11 points in his last nine games. The rest of the game, he was fairly quiet as the Wild kept him at bay.
- Denver Barkey has been an active member of the Flyers power-play during their recent upturn. He’s been a fulcrum for their quicker puck movement and he was finally rewarded with his first goal of the season.
- The Flyers forechecking game was surprisingly good against a strong Minnesota Wild defense. It started from the first shift of the Zegras-Dvorak-Konecny unit and continued with the rest of the lineup. And for the most part, they didn’t get caught on many odd man rushes.
The Bad
- Missed shots galore for the Flyers. They finished with 23 missed shots, 16 shots blocked, which added up to 39 attempts that didn’t even get on goal. Having your forechecking going is a good thing, however you can’t miss opportunities to convert. More on this below.
- Speaking of forechecking, but not finishing their chances: Travis Konecny and Zegras each had four missed shots, while Konecny didn’t even get a shot on goal.
- The top pairing of Travis Sanheim and Jamie Drysdale were lukewarm in the first two periods. While Sanheim came on in the third period, he did have three giveaways in the game.
The Ugly
- Two ugly bounces put the Flyers in an early hole. McCarron took advantage of the puck coming off of Martone’s skate in the first period. The other was Drysdale’s pass hitting the linesman, which led to Boldy’s quick transition and Erikson-Ek’s goal.
- Trevor Zegras’ 10 minute misconduct was born of frustration following that goal just can’t happen. It was poor situational awareness that compounded the Flyers’ predicament. At the same, Nick Seeler seemed to get the ire of the officiating as well with his pair of penalties after Zegras’ misconduct. The first one in particularly seemed like a “ticky-tack” call and Seeler was noticeably upset heading to the penalty box. In the end, those moments put the Flyers on their back-foot for a decent chunk of time in the second period. That made their road to a comeback an even steeper climb.
Flyers Lineup
Trevor Zegras – Christian Dvorak — Travis Konecny
Tyson Foerster – Denver Barkey – Owen Tippett
Porter Martone – Noah Cates – Matvei Michkov
Cole Knuble – Sean Couturier – Noel Acciari
Travis Sanheim — Jamie Drysdale
Cam York – Oliver Bonk
Nick Seeler — Simon Benoit
Dan Vladar
[Joseph Woll]
Team Toyota Spotlight: Flyers’ Misfires, Lack of Composure
The Flyers didn’t lose Tuesday’s game due to a lack of effort. They forechecked well, for the most part. They were successful in 50/50 puck battle “recovery plays.” In reality, the game can be boiled down to getting opportunities, not finishing them, and letting their frustration get the better of them at the worse time.
Swarming around the net? Shot wide. Power-play gets a great set-up? One-timer hits the outside of the net.
“I think we played a pretty good game,” Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet said. “Obviously you can’t stake a team like that 3-0. For me, it’s just the missed chances. We had 23 missed opportunities, I think we had nine or 10 scoring chances where we missed the net.”
At times, the Flyers look rushed on their chances. At others, they seem to be trying to pick spots for a perfect chance. Then you look at the Minnesota Wild and a player like Matt Boldy. His work on Minnesota’s game winning goal was a perfect example of situational recognition. He knew full well that his shot wasn’t going to beat an in-position Dan Vladar. But he fired the shot with the intention of a flush rebound for Erikson-Ek and that’s exactly what he got.
“Boldy on the third goal, he shoots for a rebound,” Tocchet said. “He doesn’t try to score. We try to score from those places and we shoot the puck wide. We call them location shots. Make the goalie handle it, maybe there’s a rebound.”
It’s easy to call out a talent disparity between the Wild and Flyers, but it’s also about composure. The records clearly show that one team knows how to confidently execute. Between the misfired shots and Trevor Zegras’ lack of composure after that goal, Philadelphia had dug a hole they just couldn’t climb out of. Zegras’ “showing up” of the referees following the goal compounded the Flyers predicament.
“I was frustrated and I can’t be doing that, especially since it took me out for a long time,” Zegras said. “It was just a stupid decision by me.”
In the end, those are big reasons why they’ve lost 13 of their first 17 games of the season. Now they face a long road trip starting on Thursday in New York. Noteworthy, because the Flyers have only won one road game this season.
Tocchet Postgame Video
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