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Meltzer's Musings: 8 reasons why the Rangers swept season series

April 4, 2012, 2:42 AM ET [396 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The reasons why the Flyers finished their season series against the Rangers with an 0-6-0 record are easy to find. It's the solutions that proved elusive. When you combine all of the following 8 factors, it's no wonder that Philly failed to secure a single point against the Blueshirts this season:

1) The Flyers scored a single first period goal over the six games. Last night's game was the only one in which they even generated an abundance of scoring chances right from the outset, but the result was still a goose egg on the scoreboard.

2) The Rangers scored first in five of the six games. Philly has shown itself to be an excellent comeback team but the Rangers are arguably the hardest team in the NHL against whom to successfully chase the game.

3) Special teams woes: Coming into last night's game, the Rangers were tied for 26th in the NHL's power play rankings. But you'd never know it from their performance against Philly. The Rangers went 8-for-25 (32.0%) on the power play in season series with Flyers after going 3-for-6 last night. On the flip side, the Flyers went a miserable 3-for-26 (11.5 percent) on their own power play, including last night's 1-for-8.

4) Henrik Lundqvist received strong defense in front of him (not so much last night, but in the previous five games). New York boxed out effectively in front and blocked a lot of shots throughout the bulk of the season series.

5) Lundqvist played tremendous hockey in goal in all six games, while the Flyers got uneven performances from both Ilya Bryzgalov and Sergei Bobrovsky. I am hard pressed to come up with a single "soft" goal that Lundqvist gave up in the entire season series. The closest I can come is a fat rebound that led to Brayden Schenn's goal at the Winter Classic. But that one was more of a defensive breakdown as Schenn got wide open to collect the puck and stash it home.

6) The Flyers often went long mistake-free stretches but paid dearly for ill-timed turnovers and defensive breakdowns that almost always seemed to end up in the back of the net.

7) Bad bounces. I have always been a firm believer that teams make their own luck, but in the first two meetings in particular, the Rangers benefited from a few fortuitous deflections and bounces off Philly players that either went in the net or directly to a Ranger. Conversely, Philly had a miserable run of puck luck with seemingly open chances that bounced over sticks or deflected just wide. But the bottom line to this is Philly didn't create enough of these for the breaks to eventually even out.

8) The schedule often seemed to work out that the Flyers would be playing a heavy slate of games -- often ones of emotionally draining kind such as Sunday's game in Pittsburgh -- immediately leading up to games against New York. The Rangers' injury list also inevitably seemed to be much shorter and to include fewer key players than Philly's at the times of their games against each other.

Let's look at how the games shook out on the clubs' respective schedules:

Sat Nov 26 @ MSG (2 PM): Flyers were playing for the third time in four days, and for the second afternoon in a row. New York was in the same situation; however, they enjoyed the benefit of only playing three times over the previous 10 days. In that same span, the Flyers had two additional games, and the schedule included some of their most heavy-duty travel in terms of distance between the venues (Philly to Winnipeg to Carolina to Long Island to Philly to Manhattan). The Rangers spent most of that time on the East Coast.

Friday Dec 23 @ MSG: New York was playing on back-to-back nights and for the third time in four nights, while the Flyers had not played the previous evening. However, the Rangers had been home for awhile and were in the midst of stretch of four games where all of their matches were in MSG, Newark or Long Island. Philly, on the other hand, was three games into a five-game road trip and had already played games in two different time zones (@ Colorado and @ Dallas) earlier in the week.

Jan. 2 Winter Classic @ Citizens Bank Park: Both teams were on fairly equal footing, with three days of rest/prep time for the Flyers and two days for the Rangers.

Feb. 5 @ MSG (1:00 p.m.): New York had not played in three days while the Flyers were playing for the third time in four days, including back-to-back afternoons.

Feb 11 @ WFC (1:00 p.m.): Both clubs were in the midst of a three-game-in-four-night stretch, and the Flyers had been at home all week (ditto the Rangers, who had played a game in Buffalo and three at home before coming down to Philly). But the Flyers entered the game knowing they to go to Detroit the next night to face a Red Wings team looking to set a new home winning streak record. New York was returning home to MSG again to take on a struggling Washington Capitals team.

April 3 @ WFC: The Flyers were playing for the third time in four nights (Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday), the Rangers for playing for the second (Sunday and Tuesday). While the Rangers were undoubtedly excited to play the defending Cup champion/2nd seeded Boston Bruins at MSG on Sunday, the game did not have nearly the immediate importance and emotional stakes of the Flyers-Penguins war.

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In last night's 5-3 loss, the Flyers generated a lot of early pressure in the first five minutes and actually pretty much dominated the game territorially over the final 40 minutes once New York got up 4-0. Henrik Lundqvist really didn't get a great defensive game in front of him but was spectacular in coming up with many of the 37 saves he made.

At the other end of the ice, Philly had suffered bad coverage breakdowns on the first few Rangers goals. Both the forwards and defensemen were to blame. For instance, on the first New York goal, Claude Giroux initially had the slot covered, peeled off to the wall in anticipation of the puck coming that way and then saw defenseman Ryan McDonagh blow by him on a pinch, getting wide open in the slot. It was also a rough period for many of the guys on the blueline, particularly Matt Carle and Pavel Kubina.

Ilya Bryzgalov looked to be having trouble moving quickly laterally and was unable to recover to be in position for second stops. Whether that was due to the chip fracture in his right foot or simply the lack of game action and relative sparse practice time since suffering the injury last Monday remains to be seen.

The fourth Rangers' goal of the opening period was a 5-on-3 goal. That followed on the heels of New York scoring on a delayed penalty with Jaromir Jagr in the box (which ended that man advantage). Marc-Andre Bourdon was sent to the box for a hooking penalty that was actually committed by Max Talbot, while Kubina drew a high-sticking double minor.

Over the final 40 minutes, the Flyers competed hard and even had a chance to cut the deficit back to one goal on a third period power play chance (their 8th of the game). It wasn't to be. But they got goals by the red-hot Wayne Simmonds, Jakub Voracek and a mini-slump buster by Scott Hartnell on a deflection of an Andreas Lilja shot (the goal was initially credited to Lilja but changed shortly after the game).

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Although it would be nice for the Flyers to gain home ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs against Pittsburgh, it might be a blessing in disguise if Saturday's game is rendered meaningless and Philly starts on the road. First of all, they have been a considerably better road team than home team for much of the season. Secondly, what the Flyers need above all else right now is to avoid any more injuries and start to get some personnel back.

Here are the scenarios for the Flyers:

1) If the Penguins beat the Rangers on Thursday, Saturday's game is meaningless regardless of what the Flyers do against Buffalo. Pittsburgh will be the fourth seed.

2) If the Flyers beat Buffalo and the Penguins lose to the Rangers, Saturday's game will determine home ice in the first round. A regulation loss for Pittsburgh would mean the Flyers get the fourth seed with any time of victory (regulation, OT, shootout) in the final game of the regular season. An overtime or shootout loss to the Rangers by Pittsburgh would mean the Flyers would need a regulation victory on Saturday for fourth.

3) If the Flyers lose in regulation both to Buffalo and Pittsburgh AND New Jerseys wins both of its final games(@Detroit, home vs OTT), Philly would slip to the sixth seed and play Florida in the first round while New Jersey would play Pittsburgh. A single point by the Flyers or anything less than four points from New Jersey would put Philly fifth and New Jersey sixth.


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