The Philadelphia Flyers have a solid 43-27 all-time regular season record (with 7 ties) against the Florida Panthers. After dropping a 2-1 decision last night, Philly finished the regular season series this year with a 3-1-0 mark against Kevin Dineen's club.
Last night's game was typical of the ones the Flyers have lost to Florida since the mid-1990s: a low-scoring affair in which the Flyers got the better of the shots and scoring chances but were nevertheless forced to chase the game and couldn't find an equalizer.
The Flyers had good jump at 5-on-5 in the first period, but stalled their own momentum with four mediocre power plays (including a failed 5-on-3) that generated a total of two legitimate scoring chances: a Brayden Schenn shot from the circle off a nice feed by Jaromir Jagr and one point-blank chance for Scott Hartnell that Scott Clemmensen denied.
Philly, which outshot Florida 36-13 for the game, played strong defense on the whole. But they had one major breakdown that ended up in the back of their net. Moments after the expiration of the Flyers' second power play, the defense allowed Stephen Weiss to have free reign to skate into the slot and snap a shot top shelf over Ilya Bryzgalov. There was not much Bryzgalov could have done to stop that one.
In the middle stanza, the clubs traded off lucky breaks. On Florida's first power play of the game, Dmitry Kulikov put the puck off the glass behind the Philadelphia net, where it caromed crazily in front directly to Sean Bergenheim. The Finn tucked his 17th goal of the season into an open cage.
The scales of fortune balanced off about 90 seconds later. Eric Wellwood put the puck toward the net from a side angle, and it deflected past Clemmensen off the skate of veteran defenseman Ed Jovanovski. That would be the only marker of the game for the Flyers' suddenly sporadic offense.
The Panthers kept the Flyers pretty well contained for the first half of the final period, but Philadelphia brought a lot of pressure within the final five minutes in particular. They just couldn't pot one in time to tie the game.
There are going to be nights like this over the course of the season, but the timing of this one was bad for the Flyers. They lost ground on the Penguins and damaged their own chances of home ice in the first round of the playoffs. But there are still nine games left.
Apart from his fortuitous goal, Wellwood was one of the Flyers' most noticeable players last night. He used his blazing speed effectively to create a couple of scoring chances.
On the flip side, it was not a good offensive game for Claude Giroux. The top-line center was uncharacteristically putting passes behind teammates or in their skates. He had one good scoring chance of his own, getting denied on the rush by Clemmensen. However, Giroux did lead all Flyers with 6 credited hits last night and went 17-for-20 on faceoffs.
In his return to the lineup last night, Pavel Kubina struggled a bit in his first 10 shifts or so but came on a bit as the game progressed. The returning Max Talbot looked solid and nearly scored a goal by literally crashing the net with the puck on his stick. Andreas Lilja blocked a pair of shots and was out on the ice for Weiss' goal over his 13:54 of ice time.
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The Flyers are an excellent comeback team but no club can afford to go that well too often. Last nights game marked the third straight game they've fallen behind 2-0 and the 14th time in the last 19 games that Philly has yielded the first goal of the game.
Among the other five games, four were Ilya Bryzgalov shutouts (one of which was a 0-0 game against Toronto won via shootout). The other one was the game against the Islanders in which Bryzgalov carried a shutout into the third period, setting a new franchise consecutive shutout minute record before the Isles scored two goals.
Defense and goaltending were the main culprits early in the run of getting behind in games. More recently, it's been problems with consistently finishing their scoring chances.
There are quite a few players who may be contributing in other ways, but who are struggling to put pucks in the net:
* Claude Giroux remains the team's prime offensive threat. However, he has been held pointless in four of his last seven games. Over the last five games, he has one goal and two assists.
* Scott Hartnell scored two critical goals in the Pittsburgh game but has been held pointless in seven of his last 10.
* Jaromir Jagr has been creating scoring chances but is pointless in his last three games, four of the last five and seven of the last 10. He is now eight games removed from his last goal and 11 games from his last multi-point effort.
* Danny Briere has picked up several key assists of late but he continues to have a miserable time trying to put pucks in the net. Excluding his empty netter against the Devils five games ago, he has not scored a single goal since his hat trick against Ottawa on Jan. 7. That's a span of 29 games. Overall, Briere has been held pointless in 23 of his last 34 games, dating back to late December.
* Wayne Simmonds is now 15 games removed from his last goal and has been held pointless in 8 of his last 10 games.
* Jakub Voracek is one of the Flyers who has been popping a few goals of late, including one in the Boston game. He has points (2G, 2 A) in three of five games since returning to the lineup after being creamed by Niklas Kronwall. However, going back over his last 17 games, Voracek has been blanked on the scoresheet 11 times.
* Matt Read has been pointless in four of his last five games and eight of his last 10 outings (2 G, 1A).
* Brayden Schenn is pointless in his last seven games. He has one goal and no assists over his last 17 games.
* Max Talbot is pointless in his last seven games. He has one goal and no assists over his last 13 games.
* Sean Couturier has one ENG and one "regular" goal over his last 28 games.
With so many players struggling to score goals with any sort of regularity and a greatly increased emphasis on team defense -- along with the fact that goals become tougher to come by this time of year anyway -- the Flyers have seen their once potent array of weapons largely get silenced.
The bottom line, however, is the team is still 7-2-1 over its last 10 games. The goaltending and defense have been strong, and it's giving the club a chance to win. But the team really has to break the habit of falling behind early -- and they need to do it immediately.
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