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Meltzer's Musings: 3/12/12

March 12, 2012, 9:09 AM ET [697 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
When the NHL calendar flips to March and beyond, it's crucial for successful teams to develop tunnel vision. Once a game is won or lost, they need to turn the page and they can not afford to look beyond the next match. The volatility of hockey's shifting fortunes can easily consume a team that gets too caught up in it emotionally.

For the Flyers, everything looked rosy after Saturday night's 1-0 shootout win in Toronto. They were riding a five-game winning streak and looking to put some distance in the standings between themselves and the New Jersey Devils at the conclusion of a home-and-home clash.

Now the Flyers have been caught by New Jersey, and the best they can manage from the home-and-home is a split. The Flyers have scored a grand total of one regulation goal in their last six 20-minute periods of hockey. They are also still a banged-up team (but may start getting some players back tomorrow night).

See how fast the perspective can change after a single loss? That's why, with the compacted schedule of the stretch drive and playoffs, it is critical not to spend too long dwelling on what happened the night before. That doesn't mean, of course, that the team shouldn't try to continue learning from mistakes and making adjustments. It simply means all of their emotional energy should be forward-looking to the immediate future.

Last night, the Flyers had no skating legs for much of the game. They couldn't establish a forecheck or work the puck into scoring areas. Defensively, none among Matt Carle, Braydon Coburn or Nicklas Grossmann had good games, but the overall team D was decent for the first two periods before falling apart in the third. Even so, when Andreas Lilja is your most effective defensive defenseman on a given night, chances are it's going to be a loss (and that's not a jab at Lilja or Brandon Manning).

Sergei Bobrovsky deserved a better fate last night. He kept the team in the game -- singlehandedly at times -- and kept the deficit manageable through two periods. Finally, Claude Giroux worked his way into scoring position and converted a nice feed from Jagr for Philly's lone goal of the game. Unfortunately for the Flyers, the 1-1 deadlock didn't last long.

I don't think Bobrovsky can be faulted on any of the New Jersey goals. The Patrik Elias power play goal in the first period came about as a result of bad luck (a penalty killer falling down, which allowed a rush with speed up the middle) and bad defense (weak stickchecking by Carle). The 2-on-1 goal that put New Jersey up for good in the third period was caused by Coburn jumping for -- and missing the puck -- and then Grossman taking away neither the shot nor the pass across the ice.

Ilya Kovalchuk's goal was a vicious wrist shot upstairs from the slot, and the whole sequence started with a bad turnover by Jagr, followed by a defensive miscue by Coburn (Bobrovsky made a save but the team could not recovered the puck), followed by Kovalchuk having an all-too-easy time of stepping around Carle. The final Devils tally was a case of New Jersey outworking the Flyers around the net.

Had the red-hot Ilya Bryzgalov started his 12th consecutive game last night, I don't think the game result would have been any different. The energy and support just weren't there, and Bobrovsky did his part in keeping the game under control long enough for the rest of the team to elevate their level of play and find a way to match New Jersey's solid (albeit not very entertaining) performance.

The fact that the Flyers were playing on back-to-back nights and for the fifth time in eight days is not a valid excuse. So were the Devils. But there are going to be games like these, even down the stretch and the playoffs. Now the challenge is for the Flyers to adjust for tomorrow and put forth a much better effort in the return match in Philly.

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