FLYERS COME UP SMALL IN MEASURING STICK GAME
The Philadelphia Flyers (1-7-0) enter a week-long schedule break dragging a four-game losing streak along with them. The Flyers have the fewest points in the NHL. On Thursday night, the Pittsburgh Penguins (6-1-0) dispatched Philadelphia by a 4-1 count at the Wells Fargo Center.
If not for the stellar play of goaltender Steve Mason, the Flyers easily could have been blown out by the Penguins long before the third period rolled around. The Flyers got dominated by Pittsburgh in the second period to a such a degree that Philadelphia looked like an ECHL club. It was truly that bad.
In all eight games that the Flyer have played this season, they have entered the third period leading (twice), tied (once) or down by one goal (five times, including this game). This time around, Mason was just about the only reason the team was in position where they would come away with at least a point if they won the third period.
The Flyers, who entered Thursday game getting outscored 10-2 in the third period, came out with a lot more energy and competitiveness in the third period after a Wayne Simmonds power play tip-in goal in the final two seconds of the middle stanza cut their deficit to 2-1.
Alas, it went all for naught. Philly outshot the Penguins by a 12-6 margin in the third period (after getting outshot 12-8 in the opening period and 17-5 in the second). They had two power plays in the final stanza. They had some scoring chances, most notably a point-blank chance for Brayden Schenn with lots of net in front him that ended up either getting knocked wide off Marc-Andre Fleury's stick or simply missing high and wide on its own.
Ultimately, the Penguins added a pair of insurance goals by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin (empty net) in the final three minutes of play to seal a 4-1 win. The Penguins have now outscored opponents in the third period by a 12-5 margin, while the Flyers have been outscored 12-2.
In today's game preview, I noted that the Flyers have been chronically plagued by their own inability to score goals -- 11 goals scored through eight games remains the franchise low through this juncture of the season -- and by their tendency to make the "big mistake" that ends up in their own net.
Those things came into play again in this game.
No team is going to win when it scores 1.38 goals per game. As for defensive mistakes, the Penguins capitalized three times on failed clears and/or giveaways. Mason kept the game scoreless for the first 29:43 until the Penguins finally potted their 22nd shot of the game.
The first Pittsburgh goal came at the end of a sequence where the Flyers failed the clear the zone with three opportunities to do so. First, Kimmo Timonen failed to clear the puck. Then Michael Raffl missed a chance to get it out of zone. Seconds later, Raffl again could not get the disc past the blue line. The puck went to a flat-footed Timonen, who was immediately swarmed by three Penguins (and was probably hooked by Chuck Kobasew) and lost the puck to Malkin. Jussi Jokinen received the pass from Malkin and wired home a shot.
At the 12:43 mark of the second period, Chris Kunitz stashed home a Pascal Dupuis rebound in close to the net. Once again, the sequence started with a failed clear by the Flyers.
The Flyers got a little bit of life heading into the third period, as Simmonds tallied his first goal of the season and broke the team's power play drought that stretched back to Vincent Lecavalier's third period tally in the season's second game. Giroux checked the clock with about seven second left, skated to a shooting area and fired a shot that Simmonds tipped home at the 19:58 mark.
Philly had plenty of momentum but no goals to show for it in the third period. The push came to a crashing halt at 17:28 of the third period. Braydon Coburn gave a puck away from behind the net, claimed by Pascal Dupuis. Dupuis put the puck at the net where a wide- open Crosby steered it in. Malkin added an empty net goal at 19:47.
The Flyers are off until next Thursday, when the New York Rangers come to town.
NOTES:
* The Flyers had to kill off a pair of early penalties in the first period. They also had a penalty at the end of second period, which had 59 seconds of carryover time in the middle stanza. Thanks primarily to Mason and secondarily some solid PK work by the likes of Max Talbot, Sean Couturier and Nicklas Grossmann, the Flyers killed off all three of the penalties. They went on to hold the NHL's number-one ranked power play scoreless in four opportunities.
* Kimmo Timonen left the game with a lower body injury in the latter half of the second period. He will be re-evaluated tomorrow.
* Missed and blocked shot attempts have been a big contributing factor to the Flyers' inability to score goals this season. In this game, the Flyers once again had more shot attempts not reach the net (38) than shots on goal (25). The Penguins blocked 23 shots, led by 5 from Rob Scuderi. The Flyers also missed the net on 15 attempts.
* Pittsburgh won 12 of the game's first 14 faceoffs but it was all Flyers thereafter. In the second and third periods, the went a combined 31-for-47 (66 percent) to finish the game at 58 percent (39-for-67). Couturier led the way with a 13-for-21 performance, while Giroux went 14-for-23.
* Nicklas Grossmann had a good bounceback game after his rough third period last game. He blocked a team-high five shots and was credited with three hits.
POST-GAME QUOTES
Steve Mason: “We were not happy with our first two periods of play. My opinion, and I think everyone else’s opinion, is we played terrible hockey. You are not going to win hockey games like that. I thought the guys came out with a lot more emotion in the third period and that’s the way we need to play. If we can start playing like that then we will start being more successful than we are.”
Max Talbot: "It’s tough to win games when we play only one period like we can. You know I think in the third, that’s the kind of hockey we want to play. First and second, especially second period, I really think we didn’t show up and we got some bad penalties as well again so we have a big break, six days break so we have to work on things and get back stronger."
Wayne Simmonds (asked whether second period was mostly the result of the Penguins playing at their peak): "No, we were brutal. We weren’t executing work, getting pucks deep, weren’t turning over pucks in neutral zone. They are a good transition team. We couldn’t break the puck out of our own zone and they took advantage of that."
Craig Berube (asked what he said to the team after the second period): "I am going to keep that in the room. You could probably guess what was said."
Berube (on the root cause of the team's awful second period): We stopped playing, stopped skating. We were standing around and started watching them play."
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