Flyers vs. Senators: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Bill Meltzer’s Flyers blog on Hockey Hot Stove is brought to you by Phans of Philly, by Lights On Electric, by New Balance of Mount Laurel, and by Cover All Exteriors.

Flyers

The Philadelphia Flyers remain winless on the road (0-2-1) so far in the 2025-season. On Thursday, the Flyers lost 2-1 to the Ottawa Senators. Tyson Foerster’s goal just 29 seconds after the opening face off proved to be Philadelphia’s lone tally. Michael Amadio (1st period off a Claude GIroux setup_ and former Flyers winger Olle Lycksell (2nd period) scored for the victorious Senators.

Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly from Thursday’s loss.

The good

  • Owen Tippett took a short shift to the open the game. After gathering an Ottawa neutral zone turnover , he went to the bench. After hopping over the boards to replace Tippett, meanwhile, Foerster joined the attack. He took a nice setup pass from Travis Konecny and blistered a goal from the deep slot.
  • Vladar gave his team a strong fighting chance to come away with a point or two from the game. He’s done it in all five of his starts so far this season.
  • Matvei Michkov did not record a point. However, he seems to be settling in offensively. He had four shots on goal against Ottawa, including a breakaway after stepping out of the penalty box.
  • Sean Couturier won 13 of 20 faceoffs and assisted on the Foerster goal.

The bad

  • The Flyers did an overall strong job in the previous three games of pushing opponents to the perimeter, the team allowed too much time and space to the Senators. The club had to rely a bit too heavily on Vladar (31 saves_ at time, but the goalie came through for the club.
  • Philly had trouble getting shots on net in this game. When they did get a scoring chance, they either got blocked, missed the net, or were unable to solve Linus Ullmark for a second time.
  • The Flyers were unable to captiallize on a substantial 4-on-3 power play whle trailing 2-1 in the second period.

The ugly

  • The game play in general never quite reached the same level the Flyers demonstrated in the first four minutes of the game. The team had some promising moments but they didn’t sustain much from shift to shift. They didn’t get to the inside often enough to. It was also a game where the Flyers took five stick-related minor penalties.
  • The Flyers took 15 penalties over the first three games of the season. They cleaned up the excessive penalties over the next three matches. Unfortunately, the issue retired on Thursday. It’s good that Philly went 5-for-5 on the penalty kill but the volume of penalties was excessive.
  • After going 2-for-4 on the power play on Monday, the Flyers needed better than their power play performance in Ottawa. Special teams ended up being a wash on this night, which worked out unfavorably in the 2-1 loss.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Scroll to Top