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Wrap: Flyers Fall on Road Again, Lose 3-2 to Jets; Quick Hits |
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WRAPUP: FLYERS FALL ON ROAD AGAIN, LOSE 3-2 TO JETS
Playing against a Winnipeg Jets team that was missing five defensemen and starting a goalie who hadn't had a start in two months, the Philadelphia Flyers slogged to a listless 3-2 road loss at the MTS Centre on Tuesday night. Hardly the way Dave Hakstol's team wanted to start a four-game-in-six-night trip that only gets tougher with each passing game.
Over the last three seasons, the Flyers have posted home records of 23-11-7, 23-10-8 and 21-11-4. That's solid enough. But their road records of 10-20-11, 18-17-6, 12-20-4 are unacceptable. The Flyers are an abysmal 4-15-3 on the road over their last 22 games.
On Tuesday night, the Flyers were once again their own worst enemies. While the Jets generally played solid team defense -- with the exception of the Flyers' first goal sequence -- the Flyers did very little to force the issue. The Flyers created very little off the rush, lost too many of the 50-50 battles, didn't get much traffic around the net and generally made life easy on the Winnipeg defense and goalie Michael Hutchinson.
In the meantime, Philly paid the price for sloppiness with the puck on some crucial chances. They also lost the special teams battle, generating little in going 0-for-3 on the power play while the Jets cashed in on one of six power play opportunities.
Jordan Weal and Matt Read scored for the Flyers. Radko Gudas (eight credited hits, a couple of good pinches in the offensive zone) had a notably solid game for the Flyers.Mathieu Perrault (power play), Blake Wheeler (three points), and Mark Scheifele (three points) tallied for the Jets.
On a night where he stopped 30 of 33 shots, Steve Mason played solidly enough to keep the game within reach for two-plus periods. None of the goals he yielded were soft. However, in the third period, the team in front of him put him in position to need a couple 10-bell saves that were not forthcoming. Hutchinson struggled early, making few clean saves, but settled in adequately as the game went along. He finished with 24 saves on 26 shots.
The Flyers played a rather conservative first period but played OK as the game went to intermission scoreless. In the second period, the Flyers took advantage of a very slow recovery by Hutchinson and very poor coverage by the Jets to take a short-lived 1-0 lead. Wayne Simmonds patiently bided his time down low and found a lane to shovel the puck to an untouched Weal for a point-blank goal at 4:28.
At 7:02, the Jets got the goal back on the power play.With layers of traffic in front, a Wheeler shot was tipped up and over Mason by Perrault. The Jets started to take over what had been a fairly even game to that point, and the Flyers did themselves no favors with a steady parade to the penalty box.
Even so, if the Flyers won the third period, they would have won the game. Instead, the Jets took it to Philly from the outset and the Flyers had very little pushback until it was too late.
Winnipeg took a 2-1 lead at 7:02 of the third period. A short-circuited Flyers breakout was turned over in the neutral zone and then carried back in cleanly by the Jets. Winnipeg worked the puck in and a crisp passing sequence ended up in Wheeler going bar down to the long side from the right circle for his 22nd goal of the season.
A Flyers power play opportunity with a chance to tie the game went nowhere. Winnipeg had a pair of shorthanded chances, intercepting forced cross-ice passes with ease.
At 13:51, the Jets hammered another nail in the Flyers' coffin. An awful turnover on an attempted breakout, with an Andrew MacDonald pass eluding Weal, was turned into a Jets goal in a flash, as Scheifele took a pass from Wheeler and sniped a shot from the slot.
Read tipped home a nicely conceived Del Zotto shot for a meaningless goal in the final two seconds of the game. It was Read's ninth goal of the season. Giroux received his second assist of the game.
The Flyers are in St. Paul on Thursday to play the Minnesota Wild.
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QUICK HITS: MARCH 21, 2017
1) The Lehigh Valley Phantoms pulled off a miraculous comeback on Tuesday night, recovering from a 4-0 deficit in the second period to eventually earn a 5-4 overtime road win against the St. John's IceCaps.
A goal by Cole Bardreau (9th) in the final minute of the second period cut the gap to three goals heading into intermission. Defenseman Maxime Lamarche (4th goal) narrowed the deficit to two goals at 7:45 of the third period. With 8:06 remaining in regulation, Nicolas Aube-Kubel (9th) got the Phantoms back within a goal. Offensive defenseman T.J. Brennan tied the game at 18:16 on his 19th goal of the season.
In the final minute of regulation, Chris Terry was whistled for interference, which gave the Phantoms a 4-on-3 power play in overtime. Brennan won the game with his second goal of the game and 20th of the season. Anthony Stolarz got the win with 29 saves on 33 shots.
Travis Sanheim earned a pair of primary assists in the game on the Bardreau and Lamarche goals. He had four shots on goal and finished at plus-one. The rookie now has 31 points on the season (10 goals, 21 assists) including five points in the last six games. Taylor Leier had an assist and five shots on goal.
The Phantoms (41-19-4-0) are three points behind the Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins for the top spot in the Atlantic Division. Lehigh Valley rematches with the IceCaps in Newfoundland again on Wednesday.
2) Sergey Gimayev, a famous figure in Russian hockey first as a star defenseman and then as a national TV commentator, passed away on Saturday at the age of 62. He took ill during a legends game and, sadly, did not recover.
Gimayev was a guest player on the Flyers Alumni team throughout its recent tour of Russia, playing on the Flyers' side during the games the team played in Kazan and St. Petersburg as well as the Red Square 12-on-12 shinny match that concluded the tour.
Although Gimayev spoke little English, he communicated the fact that the Flyers were an NHL team that he greatly respected and even would have liked to play for if the climate of the times were different during his playing days. He made his debut on Red Army in 1976 and, over the next few years, became a fixture on the team as well as the Soviet national squad. Standing 6-foot-4, he had good puck skills as well as size.
Gimayev was a well-liked figure among those in the international hockey community who knew him well. Apart from his hockey pedigree, he had a good sense of humor. During the Flyers Alumni's Red Square shinny match, there was Russian carnival music playing throughout the spectacle on the ice. With two dozen players on the ice at one point, a grinning Gimayev kept himself entertained by doing a few little dance steps on his skates while the puck was down at the other end.
This past weekend, as the Flyers Alumni team was preparing for its game in Reading against the Pittsburgh Penguins Alumni, the news broke of Gimayev's passing. Although the language barrier was a factor in limiting any in-depth one-on-one interactions with him during the tour, the team members who were on the Russia tour were saddened both as fellow players who respected his stature in the game and also because there was no inkling he was anything but spry and full of life.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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