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Wrapup: Flyers Look Feeble in 3-1 Loss in Buffalo, Phantoms Lose |
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WRAPUP: FLYERS LOOK FEEBLE IN 3-1 LOSS TO BUFFALO
The Philadelphia Flyers wrapped up a nightmarish pre-Halloween week of hockey with a 3-1 road loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Friday that was much more lopsided than the score suggested. Losers of three straight games -- overtime and regulation decisions against the improved Sabres, sandwiched around a home loss to the New Jersey Devils -- the Flyers played worse in each successive game.
On Friday, the Flyers (4-4-2) mustered a measley 14 shots on goal over the first two periods and found themselves trailing 3-0 early in the third period. It is common throughout hockey for teams ahead by multiple goals in the third period to get outshot, and Philadelphia's 14-5 shot edge and late goal did little more than make the final score and shot totals (36-28 in Buffalo's favor) and shot attempts (59-58 in the Sabres' favor) seem a little more respectable.
“We haven’t been able to get in any kind of a rhythm in any one of these last couple of games,” Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol said to the attending media in Buffalo.
“We had a pretty good first period I thought until we got to the 4-on-4 and that seemed to swing the momentum, and they scored right after that. In the second period tonight, we spent too much time in the box. We spent all of our energy killing those penalties off tonight. In the third, our effort level and our will were good, but we didn’t really get a push until the very end of the period.”
As was the case on Thursday night, when the Flyers lost 4-1 to New Jersey despite a strong goaltending effort by Steve Mason, the Flyers' best player on Friday in Buffalo was goalie Michal Neuvirth. Making his return to the lineup after being activated from the injured reserve list the previous day, Neuvirth was solid in turning back 33 of 36 shots.
"[Neuvirth] did a great job,” Hakstol said during his postgame press availability. “When you look through those middle penalty kills, the 5-on-3, the effort level, that’s a lot of will. Those are positive things. You’ve got to really stay strong and you’ve got to stay together when you go through times like this. Nothing’s easy right now, but you look for that kind of effort from Neuvy in net, and the guys in front of him working hard and doing whatever it would take to get through that penalty kill and give ourselves a chance.”
Buffalo got a late first period goal by Jack Eichel, an early second period power play goal by Ryan O'Reilly and an early third period tally by Nicolas Deslauriers to take an insurmountable three-goal lead before the Flyers offered any sort of response. Even things that are ordinarily momentum turners, such as the Flyers surviving a 5-on-3 penalty kill in the second period, did very little to turn the tide of the game. O'Reilly finished with a three-point game.
The Flyers finally got on the board with 3:26 remaining in the third period, as Mark Streit scored his third goal of the season. R.J. Umberger and Sam Gagner got the assists.
Hakstol shook up the lineup for this game. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, the changes only seemed to add to the collective lack of poise and discipline on either side of the puck against a loose and increasingly confident Buffalo team.
“The effort is there, but a few things are creeping into our game, mistakes,” Streit said to the attending media. “I feel like we have a whole lot of unnecessary turnovers. Instead of us getting in on the forecheck, the other team gets in on the forecheck. I thing discipline is an issue too. We just take too many penalties and it costs a lot of momentum and a lot of energy for the guys killing. You can’t win any hockey games like that.”
The lineup at the start of the game saw Claude Giroux center Matt Read and Wayne Simmonds, Scott Laughton center Brayden Schenn and Jakub Voracek, Michael Raffl center Umberger and Gagner, and Ryan White centering Chris VandeVelde and a very sparingly used Vincent Lecavalier (11 shifts, 6:58 of ice time) on the fourth line. The defense pairings had Michael Del Zotto with Streit, Nick Schultz with Luke Schenn and Evgeny Medvedev with Radko Gudas.
Continuing themes that have been problems in October, but especially over the last three games, the Flyers gave up far too many shots and scoring chances to Buffalo and also could not stay out of the penalty box. Philadelphia spent 9:02 of total game time on the penalty kill, but managed to go 5-for-6 including getting through a two-man disadvantage. In the meantime, the struggling Philadelphia power play went 0-for-4.
At 19:24 of the first period, highly touted rookie center Eichel, made Medvedev look foolish on a line rush. Eichel beat Medevev one-one-one with an inside cut from the left circle, going right past the Russian defenseman. Eichel then wristed a shot from the slot that beat Neuvirth to the stick side for his fourth NHL goal. O'Reilly and Johan Larsson earned the assists. The sequence started with Medvedev losing a 50-50 puck battle with O'Reilly at the offensive blueline.
With Lecavalier in the box for interference early in the second period, O'Reilly ripped a left circle shot through a heavy screen by Zemgus Girgensons and past Neuvirth for a power play goal at the 4:20 mark. Gudas went down in an attempt to block the shot and failed to come up with it while Girgensons set up shop directly in front of Neuvirth to completely obscure the goalie's line of vision. Brian Gionta and Cody Franson received the assists.
Through two periods, Buffalo enjoyed a 31-14 shot advantage. Only in the third period did the Flyers manage to test 22-year-old Sabres goalie Linus Ullmark.
Before that happened, however, the Sabres' lead grew to 3-0. At the 3:12 mark of the third period, Deslauriers chipped a cross-ice pass from O'Reilly on a Buffalo counterattacking rush past Neuvirth. The counter started as a semi two-on-one rush with Luke Schenn as the Philadelphia defender and Deslaurier got the puck a quarter-stride ahead of the backchecking arrival of Voracek. Marcus Foligno earned the secondary assist for a lead pass to O'Reilly to send Buffalo off on the attack after a shot attempt by White in the Buffalo end.
At 16:34, Streit pinched up to join the rush and took a pass from Umberger to beat Ullmark from near the right post. With three goals and four assists through the first 10 games, Streit took over the Flyers' early season point lead from Brayden Schenn (four goals, two assists).
In the final minute of the game, the Flyers finished the night on a power play after Josh Gorges boarded Simmonds. Gorges got a major and a game miscoduct, while an enraged Simmonds received a 10-minute misconduct. Philly drew no closer, and Ullmark finished with 27 saves on 28 shots.
Voracek, still stuck on three points for the young season, had four shots on goal. He now has 44 on the season (20 in the last four games) without scoring a goal to date. Last season, Voracek had 10 percent shooting percentage. He found the net on 9.8 percent of his shots in 2013-14. The lockout shortened 2012-13 campaign was an outlier, as Voracek racked up 22 goals in 48 games while scoring goals at a 17.1 percent shooting clip.
While the player's luck is bound to change for the better if he keeps generating such a high rate of shots, it is worth noting that points have been harder to come by for him since much of the second half of the 2014-15 season. The scoring chances have still come but the goals for Voracek and regular linemate Giroux have been tougher to get.
Over his last 42 games dating back to last season, Voracek has five goals -- four power play, one even strength -- and 18 assists for 23 points. Giroux has 11 goals and 28 points over his last 44 games. Five of Giroux's goals in that span have been even-strength tallies, while the other six have come on the power play.
Simmonds, who has one goal and five points through 10 games, has always tended to be a streaky goal scorer. He has 22 shots on goal for the season to date. Last year, en route to scoring 28 goals in 75 games, the power forward averaged 2.5 shots per game and scored on a career best 14.9 percent of his shots on goal.
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PHANTOMS FALL TO ST. JOHN'S, 3-2
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms fell to 3-5-0 on the young season as they dropped a 3-2 regulation decision to St. John's IceCaps at the PPL Center in Allentown, PA on Friday night. The Phantoms wasted a two-goal effort by veteran Chris Conner, while Anthony Stolarz stopped 23 of 26 shots in a losing cause. Shots for the game were 26-25 in St. John's favor.
After a scoreless first period and a 12-10 IceCaps shot edge, St. John's Sven Andrighetto opened the scoring just 30 seconds into the second period off a carom from the end boards out to the goal-scorer at the other side. Charles Hudon added a power play marker at 6:59 to give St. John's a 2-0 lead. Receiving a centering pass from Bud Holloway, Hudon stashed the puck home from near the right post.
The Phantoms responded quickly with a power play goal of their own to the deficit back to a goal. In the waning seconds of the two-man advantage portion of a 5-on-3, Conner beat a defenseman on the rush and avoided a desperation pokecheck attempt by goaltender Zach Fucale before depositing the puck in the net. The first IceCaps penalty expired one second before the puck crossed the goal line, bringing the remaining 1:25 of five-on-four time to an end. Flyers' salary cap-related exile Andrew MacDonald received the primary assist while Matt Lashoff got the secondary helper.
Shortly after Connor's first goal, the temperature of the game elevated further with a fight between Phantoms' enforcer Derek Mathers and IceCaps' counterpart Eric Neilson. The bout ended fast, with Mathers coming out on top.
Shots in the second period ended up 7-6 in the Phantoms' favor. Lehigh Valley had a four-minute power play in the second half of the period but did little with it.
Finally, at 5:55 of the third period, Lehigh Valley drew even. St. John's defenseman Dalton Thrower was guilty of making one of hockey defensemen's most common gaffes, stepping up on the play to deliver a big hit at the offensive blueline at the expense of letting the puck get past him and leaving his partner and the goalie to defend an odd-man rush.
In this case, Dalton Thrower rocked Nick Cousins with a huge hit a split second after he passed the puck up the left wing to speedy Danick Martel, who was joined by the fleet Conner on a two-on-one rush. Martel faked a shot and then made a perfect cross-slot pass to Conner, who took care of the rest to knot the game at 2-2.
The bad news for the Phantoms: Cousins had trouble getting up and had to leave the game. There was no immediate word on his status.
Third-period shots on goal were tied at eight apiece. However, the 2-2 tie did not last long.
At 8:49, on a rush the Phantoms claimed was offside (the on-ice ruling would have been challenged in an NHL game), Michael McCarron batted the rebound of a Christian Thomas shot into the net to restore a one-goal lead for the IceCaps. The Phantoms never found an equalizer.
The Phantoms finished the game 1-for-4 on the power play and 1-for-2 on the penalty kill. Shayne Gostisbehere, who recently scored his first pro-level regular season goal, was minus-one with zero points, three shots on goal and an early third third slashing minor penalty. Fellow defenseman Samuel Morin was even with one shot and no penalties.
Injury-riddled over the last couple weeks, the Phantoms started to get some healthy bodies back in the lineup. However, second-year defenseman Robert Hägg was still absent, as was veteran forward Colin McDonald and Cole Bardreau. Rookie winger Michael Parks is slated to miss significant time. In the meantime, both Cousins and right winger Evan Rankin (struck on the left side of his neck by a Gostisbehere shot in the third period) were unable to finish Friday's game.
The Phantoms are on the road on Sunday to take on the Hershey Bears. The same two teams will rematch in Allentown next Friday.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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