The Philadelphia Flyers saw their four-game winning streak come to an end on Thursday night, falling 2-1 to the Colorado Avalanche at the Pepsi Center. Winning goaltender Semyon Varlamov turned back 29 of 30 shots, while Steve Mason stopped 29 of 31.
Jamie McGinn and Ryan O'Reilly tallied for Colorado. Wayne Simmonds notched the lone Philadelphia goal. The Avalanche had the better of the play in the early part of the game and then Philadelphia elevated its level of play to match Colorado's effort. The Flyers just couldn't solve Varlamov.
The Colorado netminder made nine of his 30 saves during the Flyers' three power plays (0-for-3) in the game. He also denied Steve Downie on a breakaway, turning aside a tough backhanded shot.
Mason also played quite well but the puck luck turned against him a couple of times.
McGinn's goal, which gave Colorado a 1-0 lead at 11:14 of the first period, came off a 2-on-1 rush. The sequence was somewhat similar to Calgary's lone goal in Tuesday's game, in that it started with a neutral zone turnover that saw defenseman Mark Streit getting caught out of position on the counterattack.
Sean Couturier was unable to control a Vincent Lecavalier pass outside his blueline and the Avs took over possession near the red line. While Couturier was trying to get a handle on the puck, Streit skated right past him. That left only Nicklas Grossmann back to defend the odd-man rush when Erik Johnson took the puck away from a flat-footed Couturier.
Mason made an excellent initial save on Matt Duchene but no Flyer picked up trailing forward McGinn, who stashed home the unpreventable rebound.
At 9:17 of the second period, O'Reilly scored a give-and-go line rush goal from a tough angle. Mason had the right angle to make the stop but rather than hitting his pad and deadening, the puck went off the top of the goalie's pad, popped airborne and over the goalie's shoulder into the net.
The initial play started with a 4-on-3 rush for Colorado off a blocked shot attempt by Luke Schenn. Gabriel Landeskog and O'Reilly were able to work it into a mini 2-on-1 up the left wing. as the two players worked the give-and-go against Schenn and O'Reilly was able to fire on the net unimpeded from a flat angle at the bottom of the circle. It never really looked like a dangerous scoring chance until the shot suddenly crawled up Mason and ended up going into the net.
Simmonds, who has points in seven of the last eight games, got the Flyers back within a goal at 13:48 of the middle frame. He deflected home a pinballing Andrej Meszaros shot that appeared to go in off Simmond's knee or shinpad.
Scott Hartnell earned the secondary assist on the goal. He has points in six straight games (two goals, five assists, seven points) and points in seven of his last eight games (two goals, six assists, eight points).
No further scoring ensued for either team. Philly benefited from a quick whistle at 11:01 of the third period. It was ruled that Mason covered the puck for a stoppage of play a split second before McGinn poked the disc home for his would-be second goal of the game.
The Flyers threw plenty of rubber at Varlamov in the third period but never found an equalizing goal on this night. The goaltender made 10 of his saves in the final period, including some tough ones on an early period Philadelphia power play with former Flyers forward Max Talbot in the box for hooking.
In the meantime, Mason kept the Flyers within a shot of tying the game. He made 10 of his 29 saves in the third period. The team has been giving him much better goal support of late, but the goals just weren't there on this night.
On the heels of their respective nine-game point streaks, Flyers captain Claude Giroux and linemate Jakub Voracek have been respectively held without a point in back-to-back (Giroux) and three consecutive (Voracek) games.
Couturier had a tough game. He took both of the Flyers' minor penalties in this game, lost nine of 16 faceoffs and was on the ice for both Colorado goals although he was not a main culprit on either, despite his turnover on the McGinn goal where he couldn't settle the puck. Couturier, who was credited with one shot on goal last night, has one point (an assist in Calgary) in his last five games.
As a team, the Flyers had a bad night on faceoffs against a Colorado team that came in winning slightly less than 49 percent of its draws on the season. The Avs won 57 percent of the faceoffs (35 of 61) in this game.
The injury bug has started to bite the Flyers over the past week. After losing Matt Read to an upper body injury on Tuesday, the team saw Michael Raffl leave last night's game in the first period with a concussion as a result of a punishing but clean hit by Colorado's Gabriel Landeskog.
The Flyers return to action on Saturday night in Phoenix.
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