After last night's 4-2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, I laid awake in bed and ran through a litany of ways to rationalize the Philadelphia Flyers' performance in the game.
"Look, you aren't going to impose your will on other teams every night," I thought to myself. "There's a lot of parity in the NHL, and it's tough to beat the same team three times in a row in less than a month. The Flyers were playing without Chris Pronger, Braydon Coburn and Jaromir Jagr. Besides, these aren't robots out there playing -- they're humans, and there will be nights where they seemingly lack sufficient mental sharpness or energy."
You know what? I still didn't feel better.
Last night's game should have been about close to a guaranteed two points as things get in today's NHL. It only leveled the theoretical playing field somewhat that the Flyers were without three key regulars and had Kevin Marshall and Marc-Andre Bourdon (the 10th and 11th defensemen on the depth chart when viewed in hockey terms and not in terms of the salary cap and waiver rules) making their NHL debuts on the same night.
First of all, Carolina was playing for the third time in four nights and had just played the previous night. The Flyers were the more rested team.
The Hurricanes are not a very deep team. They are one that has struggled mightily for goals this season, and hasn't exactly been a shutdown defensive club, either. Carolina entered last night as the NHL's worst team on the power play, connecting a miserable 11.6 percent of the time.
On top of that, the Flyers almost always beat Carolina. Not only had Philly dispatched the Canes with relative ease twice within the last three weeks, the Flyers also entered last night's game with a 17-1-3 in their last 21 games against Carolina. The Canes' last regulation win in Philadelphia came on December 19, 2006, when they downed the Flyers by a 2-1 score.
Last but not least, missing key players is a lousy excuse for a loss. Yes, other players need to absorb more minutes and deal with fatigue. It's all part of the game. The Pittsburgh Penguins not only survived for months and months with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, they thrived.
It was not too much to ask the Flyers to dig deep, show the sort of work ethic and discipline they displayed in last Thursday's win over Phoenix and grit out a victory against the 14th place team (26th leaguewide) in the Eastern Conference.
Last night, the work ethic was there in the sense that the Flyers worked hard, especially in the second period. The energy was not there in the first period. While the team worked hard as the game progressed, they still didn't work particularly smart.
Some examples: Andrej Meszaros tried to do too much on the PK that resulted in Carolina's first goal and ended up creating a monster for his own club. Claude Giroux repeatedly forced passes into heavy traffic. One can also look at situations such as where Scott Hartnell's overzealousness at the end of the first period cost the team a power play.
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The Flyers' penalty killing let them down last night. With all due respect to the Hurricanes, there is no excuse for the PK to get carved up by a power play as poor as Carolina's. The Canes didn't do anything special last night. They just took what the Flyers gave them, which was outnumbered situations (mini 2-on-1s) down low and free reign to go to the net.
On the first goal, Andrej Meszaros made three gaffes within the span of 10 seconds. He failed on a pair of chances to clear the puck out of the zone. Then he over-committed to his man and took himself out of the play (a chronic problem for Meszaros so far this season), leaving Kimmo Timonen to defend a 2-on-1 near the net. Timonen gambled by sliding to the ice to block the pass; a do-or-die play. It didn't work, and Alexei Ponikarovsky had a slam dunk off the feed from Chad Larose.
On Carolina's second power play goal, Ponikarovsky once again had no price to pay near the net. Ilya Bryzgalov was down on his back, making snow angles and the disoriented Flyers' penalty killers made themselves useless by failing to accomplish any among helping their goalie freeze the puck, clearing the porch or at least tying up a Carolina attacker or two to give a teammate chance to shovel the puck to safety.
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Another reason the Flyers lost: Cam Ward outplayed Ilya Bryzgalov by a country mile. Ward played a tremendous game, while Bryz was fighting the puck pretty much from the outset and never really settled into any sort of rhythm.
The Chad Larose goal was a nice shot, high to the glove side from the left circle. But that's a goal Bryzgalov and the Flyers could not afford at that time or from that spot on the ice.
Likewise, Jeff Skinner's goal on the line rush was exactly the sort of play that the Flyers are paying Bryzgalov franchise-goalie money to stop.
Skinner made a dazzling spin-o-rama move to beat Timonen off the rush -- one of the few times this season that Timonen has been beaten cleanly one-on-one -- and at that point, it was up to the goalie to prevent a goal and keep his team in the game. Skinner really didn't a lot on his shot, but the puck hit the top of the goalie's pad, rolled down the back of his and into the net.
There was nothing Bryzgalov could have done to prevent the first Ponikarovsky goal, and he got no help on the second once he was down and out on the ice. But on a night where Ward made a host of huge saves and only allowed two goals (James van Riemsdyk and Matt Read) where he had no chance, Bryzgalov needed to come up with the ones where he had a chance at a save.
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The third and final key reason why the Flyers lost night is that, apart from Bryzgalov, they really needed Claude Giroux, Danny Briere and Timonen to be their best players. That wasn't the case. None really stepped up in game.
Instead, it was James van Riemsdyk who played dominating hockey in the second period. His goal and subsequent assist to Matt Read looked like the sort of plays JVR made in the first 9 games of the playoffs last year. As for Read, what else can be said except that he continues to be stellar?
After the second period last night, it felt like the Flyers still had a chance at coming back if they could cut the deficit to 4-3 within the first few minutes. I thought that it was time for Giroux or Briere in particular to take the bull the horns and find a way to score.
Instead, Carolina bottled Philadelphia up and the Flyers never really came close to mounting a comeback. Very disappointing.
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In his postgame press conference, Peter Laviolette was asked to assess the play of Marshall and Bourdon.
"I thought they came up and played hard," he said.
If you consult your Coachspeak to English dictionary, what that means is, "These are two career minor league defensemen for a reason. They gave it their best."
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