In the latter throes of a winning streak, teams often have stretches of games where they really don't play very well but they get away with sloppy play. Eventually, it catches up with them in the first loss.
That's basically when happened last night in Sunrise, FL, as the Flyers dropped a 3-1 decision. The Panthers came out with their workboots on, and the Flyers really did not respond with comparable urgency until they were in a 2-0 hole and they only had 20 minutes left in which to try to rescue a win.
Sean Bergenheim notched a pair of goals for Florida on a quick poke-in follow-up of his own wrap-around attempt and a deflection goal. In the third period, Cats defenseman Erik Gudbranson weaved a center point shot through a heavy dual screen in front. The shot hit Steve Mason up high, landed in the crease and went into the net.
Mason turned back 28 of 31 shots in the loss. It was not a bad performance, but he got outplayed on this night by Tim Thomas (38 saves on 39 shots). The two-time Vezina winner came up with several extremely tough saves, with few rebounds. Only a penalty killing breakdown in front of him, with an unpreventable rebound and a goal from the doorstep by Wayne Simmonds eluded Thomas on this night.
For a little too long last night, the Flyers carried over the wrong segments of the Buffalo and Islanders games -- the portions where they let themselves get outworked a bit, the passing was not as crisp, there were some corners cut in battling for real estate and the puck management left something to be desired. It was nothing egregious but, in the NHL, not treating every opponent like a dangerous one is playing with fire.
The difference this time as compared to the previous two games against was the Flyers did not find a way to forge ahead in the second period. Compared to the other struggling teams the Flyers recently beat, Panthers have actually been playing better hockey of late. They knocked off some good clubs during a four-game western road trip and made themselves a tough team to play against last night.
Philly paid dearly for not grabbing control of the game while it was still scoreless. They had some power play chances -- including a lengthy 5-on-3 -- and several good looks at the net at even strength but could not bury any of their opportunities. They ended up having to chase the game after Bergenheim's two goals, and it was a little too much to overcome.
The Simmonds goal cut the deficit to one. However, a failed clearing opportunity for Erik Gustafsson with referee Tim Peel caught up in the play -- coupled with defense partner Luke Schenn being the unwitting half of a two-player screen with Aleksander Barkov directly in front of Mason on Gudbranson's goal -- resulted in Florida restoring its two-goal cushion with 4:08 remaining in the game.
The Flyers will try to right their ship and return to the .500 mark on Wednesday in Tampa Bay. The game will mark Bolts icon Vincent Lecavalier's first game against the Lightning.
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THOUGHTS ON RINALDO PK EXPERIMENT
Zac Rinaldo, the Flyers' agitating fourth line winger, has been saying for several years that he wants to make himself a more valuable player by participating on the penalty kill. He is finally getting that chance at the NHL level this season under Craig Berube and assistant coach Ian Laperriere.
During the Peter Laviolette coaching regime, the coach would often say during training camp that he'd consider giving Rinaldo the opportunity he craved. Nevertheless the player very rarely got on the ice in those situations (and, even then, usually at the tail end of a kill with an offensive zone faceoff). Rinaldo did get a bit of penalty killing time for Terry Murray's Phantoms in Adirondack during the lockout last season but remained solely an even strength "energy" player for the Flyers after the lockout ended.
When Laperriere became an assistant coach for the Flyers after the early season coaching staff changes, he pledged to help Rinaldo fulfill his goal of expanding his role. "Lappy" noted that Rinaldo has the speed and dogged puck pursuit to evolve into an effective PK player.
Thus far, Rinaldo has not done great on penalty kills. He seems to be guilty of some overplays that take him out of position. However, growing pains are only to be expected and he hasn't been awful, either. It's rather unfair to blame one player, who still isn't even one of the primary forwards in the PK shift rotation, for being the main reason for the team's recent downturn on the kill. Last night, Rinaldo got 21 seconds worth of PK time among his 6:46 of ice time. He was not on the ice for Bergenheim's power play goal.
When the Flyers dealt Max Talbot to Colorado in the deal that sent Steve Downie to Philadelphia, the trade-off for adding a little extra tenacity and offensive ability was the club was losing arguably its best penalty killing forward (if it wasn't Talbot, it was Sean Couturier). That meant there was going to be a period of experimentation and some trial and error as the team sought ways for others to cover those tough minutes of ice time.
The Rinaldo PK experiment is just one piece of reshuffling the deck, and not even the most important part of it. As far as his ongoing participation in the kill goes, it comes down to a matter of faith in the player.
Some fans do not believe that Rinaldo has what it takes to channel his energy into intelligently controlled aggression (here referring to aggression in going after the puck carrier, not in terms of his body checking aggression). Laperriere has more faith in Rinaldo, largely because he is someone who works hard and is eager to improve.
This is going to be a work in progress for awhile. Personally, I think Rinaldo deserves the opportunity.
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Note: I will post the Flyers' prospect roundup in my Thanksgiving Day blog, as the subsection after the discussion of the Flyers-Tampa game.
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