Wanna blog? Start your own hockey blog with My HockeyBuzz. Register for free today!
 

Meltzer's Musings: 2/6/12

February 6, 2012, 9:11 AM ET [1074 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Failure hurts. The Philadelphia Flyers entered a crucial weekend of the regular season coming off a solid win against the Nashville Predators and slunk away with their tails between their legs following 6-4 and 5-2 losses to the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers.

Now it will up to the Flyers to roll up their sleeves and get back to work in order to turn around their 1-2-1 start after the All-Star break. Having just played three games in four days, they won't formally practice on ice today but may have a video day and team meeting following an optional skate.

The Flyers are now an unacceptable 4-7-1 in afternoon games. They chronically get off to bad starts and find themselves chasing games early, which leaves no margin for error. Unfortunately, the Flyers continue to make errors of commission and omission beyond that point. In four of the afternoon games, they've allowed six goals. Twice, they've given up five goals in regulation, including yesterday.

It's tough to say which loss this weekend was tougher to swallow. The common thread of the two matches is that it showed the symbiotic relationship between goaltending and team defense. When one is bad, it eventually drags the other down with it.

In the game against the Devils, Sergei Bobrovsky held the Flyers in the game until late in the first period. Buoyed by spending considerable time on the power play, New Jersey racked up 12 quick shots. Bobrovsky had no chance on New Jersey's opening 5-on-3 power play goal, and made about five or six tough stops among the first 11 he made.

The Flyers did a miserable job at responding to adversity in the first two periods of the Devils game. What should have been a manageable game turned into a blowout with frightening speed, because the team came mentally unglued.

Yes, referees Ghislain Hebert and Eric Furlatt blew it badly on a non-call of Dainius Zubrus' trip of Claude Giroux -- which led moments later to a shorthanded goal that made it a 2-0 game in the last minute of the opening period. But that was NOT what swung the outcome of the game on a day where the Flyers were massively outplayed for 40 minutes.

First of all, if Giroux had hit a gaping net prior to that sequence, it would have been a 1-1 game. Secondly, there was still an opportunity to make a save on the counter-rush. Last but not least, a two-goal deficit -- while tough -- is still somewhat manageable for a team that scores as many goals as the Flyers do.

The real killer sequence was the one that led to the Devils scoring in the final second of the first period to make it a 3-0 game. Rather than putting their emotions in check long enough to get to the locker room and regroup, the Flyers ran around their defensive zone aimlessly. Scott Hartnell lost any semblance of discipline. Brayden Schenn was in no man's land. The other three skaters on the ice were scattered around the defensive zone. Bobrovsky wasn't focused or square to the shooters.

Next thing you know, the Flyers are down 3-0 and Hartnell's end-of-period penalty put them shorthanded to start the second period. The Devils converted rapidly to make it 4-0 against a Flyers penalty kill that now stands at a pathetic 78.1 percent at home (ranked 27th in the NHL).

Two shifts later, Alexei Ponikarovsky scored the game's first even-strength goal to make it a 5-0 game. The Flyers continued to take undisciplined penalties, and neither the penalty killers nor Bobrovsky picked them up. It was 6-0 at 8:22 of the second period.

Perhaps the most galling thing about the first two periods of the game is there were maybe two minutes out of the opening 40 where the Flyers did the sorts of things that could help them win the game. The club strung together two strong consecutive forechecking shifts later in the first period starting with a big hit by Wayne Simmonds. Philly earned a power play and then the non-call and shorthanded goal happened.

Hartnell said it best after the game when he said he was embarrassed to be a Philadelphia Flyer in the first two periods against the Devils. The compete level, discipline and execution just were not there until the game was hopelessly out of reach at 6-0.

The Flyers' four-goal third period was too little too late. All it really showed was that Philadelphia would have been capable of coming back from a 2-0 deficit if they had kept their wits about them at the end of the first period and buckled down over the final 40 minutes. A 20-minute effort won't get it down when you are trailing by two field goals in a sport that counts by ones.

Yesterday, the Flyers competed hard on a day where the scheduling deck was stacked against them but still came up short. Against the Devils, the Flyers lost the game on special teams. Against the Rangers, they were strong on the PK, scored a power play goal and had one or two other unsuccessful power play where they moved the puck well but kept getting shots blocked by the defense or stopped by Henrik Lundqvist.

Instead, the Flyers lost yesterday's game at even strength. Goaltending obviously was the single biggest factor in the game -- Lundqvist was sensational for 60 minutes, while Ilya Bryzgalov was excellent for 39 minutes and 54 seconds before imploding.

After all the hard work that went into the Flyers rallying back from 1-0 and 2-1 deficits against the hardest team to come back against in the NHL, the soft goals that Bryz allowed to Marian Gaborik (final five seconds of the second period) and Michael Del Zotto (36 seconds after Wayne Simmonds re-tired the score) cut the heart out of the Flyers.

On Saturday, I thought the Flyers' lack of discipline and porous defense eventually dragged Bobrovsky down with it. Yesterday, Bryzgalov's letdowns were a dagger to his team's heart. When they fell behind 3-2, the tiring Flyers team began to press in the third period. After the Flyers committed only three charged giveaways in the first 40 minutes of the game, the Rangers rapidly converted a terrible turnover by Matt Carle into the Brandon Dubinsky goal that put the game away with 7:45 remaining.

It is unfair to pin all of the blame for yesterday's loss on Bryzgalov. He didn't turn the puck over for Carle or force Marc-Andre Bourdon to stand around like a spectator. It wasn't on Bryzgalov that Claude Giroux had three glorious scoring opportunities in the game and couldn't bury one. Lundqvist committed highway robbery a few times -- including a sharp-angle stick save on Brayden Schenn, who later scored a beauty on a breakaway coming out of the penalty box.

From a team-wide perspective, one of the most striking things about yesterday's game overall, apart from all the shots the Rangers blocked, was the contrast between New York's level of puck support and Philadelphia's. For most of this game, it seemed as if there were two white sweaters to every one Philadelphia one around the puck. That was also the case in two of the previous three meetings.

After the game, the fans at Madison Square Garden cockily chanted "you can't beat us" at the Flyers. That's a bit premature, considering the fact that the Rangers haven't gotten through two rounds of playoffs since 1997 (when they lost to the Flyers in five games).

However, there is no doubt that John Tortorella's team -- which is now a combined 49-0-2 over the last two regular seasons when leading after two periods -- is a club you can ill-afford to fall behind. Your goaltending and team defense need to be rock solid -- for 60 minutes or more, not just the majority of the game.

The Flyers will attempt to climb back on the horse this week. They have a home game against the Islanders tomorrow before embarking on another extremely challenging three game in four day gauntlet of playing the Maple Leafs at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday, rematching with the Rangers on Saturday and then going to Detroit the next afternoon to play the team with the best home record in the NHL.

In other words, there's no time for the Flyers to feel sorry for themselves. This upcoming week is every bit as tough as the last, and the results this time around need to be lot better. The goal should be at least seven of eight possible points, and that's going to take a lot of doing and much more consistency of focus and execution.

***********

Please visit our sponsor HockeyTickets.ca.

Use coupon code "FlyersBuzz" between now and the end of the regular season to receive a 10% discount on all ticket orders over $150 and also have a chance to win two free lower-level seats to a Flyers regular season game of your choice at the Wells Fargo Center.

KINDLE USERS: Please sign up for Flyers Buzz. For more information click here.
Join the Discussion: » 1074 Comments » Post New Comment
More from Bill Meltzer
» Flyers Gameday: 3/28/24 @ MTL
» Wrap: Flyers Lose 6-5 OT Game to Rangers
» Flyers Gameday: 3/26/24 @ NYR
» Quick Hits: Flyers-FLA Wrap, Flyers Daily, Phantoms, Bigger than Hockey
» Flyers Gameday: 3/24/2024 vs. FLA; Phantoms Update