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Wrapup: Flyers Fire Blanks Again in 4-0 Loss to Senators |
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WRAPUP: FLYERS FIRE BLANKS AGAIN, LOSE 4-0 TO OTTAWA
Goalless in their last 137 minutes and 34 seconds of hockey, the Philadelphia Flyers got shut out for the second straight game as they fell to the host Ottawa Senators, 4-0, on Saturday evening. Philadelphia has won just two of its last 13 games (2-7-4) and has scored two or fewer goals in 14 of the 20 games played this season. The 34 goals scored by the Flyers through the first 20 games sets an unwanted new franchise record for the fewest goals at this point of season. The previous low was 39 goals through the first 20 games of the 1968-69 season.
Meanwhile the Senators earned their second straight shutout win after blanking the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday night. Craig Anderson, who stopped all 25 shots he saw against Columbus, turned back 36 of 36 Philadelphia shots. The Senators also blocked 29 shot attempts and won 60 percent of the faceoffs.
“We had a good start,” Flyers captain Claude Giroux said to the attending media in Ottawa. “I think we played the way we wanted to. They scored the first goal and kind of changed the way we were playing. We need to learn from this and need to keep playing 60 minutes the same way.”
Mika Zibanejad, Mike Hoffman, Milan Michalek and Kyle Turris scored for the Senators.Ottawa tallied in the final minute of the first period, within the first 90 seconds of the middle stanza, a late second period goal and early in the third period at the expiration of a power play.
Steve Mason stopped 27 of 31 shots in a losing cause for the Flyers. Mason made his share of tough saves, including a couple of 10-bell stops where he was left to fend for himself, but Anderson was the better goaltender on this night. The four Ottawa goals came off a nasty deflection moments after a clean faceoff loss, followed by a pair of 2-on-1 goals and finally a one-timer from the left circle that was unintentionally set up by an unfavorable bounce off a Flyers defenseman.
Mason had no chance on the first one. The others would all have required difficult -- but not impossible -- saves or a mistake by the shooter. Once Ottawa scored its third goal, the rest of the game was a formality.
“We’re not going to make any wholesale changes on anything,” Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol said in his post-game press conference.
“Tonight, we got ourselves after a good first period, by giving up right at the end of the period a faceoff goal, and then turned that in right away in the start of the second giving up the second goal in a 2-on-1 situation after a good start to this hockey game. It was very competitive all the way through the first period, but to give up that first goal put us back on our heels.”
Zibanejad's goal, tallied with 44 seconds left in the first period, started with a clean faceoff win in the Philadelphia zone. The Sens worked the puck up high. In the meantime, Zibanejad slipped untouched behind a fronting Radko Gudas as defenseman Cody Ceci fired a shot from just inside the blueline. The puck deflected off Zibanejad's shin-pad and redirected past Mason.
Up to that point, the Flyers had a decent first period despite their ongoing offensive futility an inability to capitalize on either of two power plays against one of the NHL's bottom-tier penalty kills. Nevertheless, the Flyers good jump early and their share of offensive pressure.
Just 2:09 into the game, Flyers' center Scott Laughton was hit head-first from behind into the boards by Ottawa forward Alex Chiasson. The former Dallas Star was not penalized for the hit, so the infraction must not have been seen by the officials. However, Flyers forward Sam Gagner saw it and went at it with the much larger Chiasson, getting an instigation penalty and accompanying 10-minute misconduct for his troubles. Laughton did not return to the game.
Entering the second period, the Flyers had a chance to regroup but then gave up a backbreaking goal just 1:22 into the frame. Sean Couturier turned a puck over to Bobby Ryan going backwards around the boards with the puck. Michael Del Zotto compounded the problem with an ill-advised attempt to cut Ryan off at the bluline with no support nearby. Ryan easily side-stepped Del Zotto and quickly regained the puck on the other side to go off on a 2-on-1 with Hoffman. Gudas was the lone defender.
As Ryan skated up the right side, Gudas failed to take away the pass (the defender's main job on the play), leaving Mason to have to make a desperation lunging save or hope for Hoffman to make a mistake. Instead, Hoffman buried the shot from the bottom of the left circle before Mason could quite get over. Simply because the pass and shot were made from a bit further out, this 2-on-1 was a hair more "stoppable" for a goalie than the Melker Karlsson goal that ended Thursday's 1-0 overtime loss to San Jose but that's basically the difference between a 10-of-10 difficulty save and a 9.8-of-10. Everything was executed perfectly by Ryan and Hoffman.
Now the Flyers' had no margin for error the rest of the night -- and even if they avoided any further breakdowns, the lowest-scoring team in the NHL would still have to find a way to score three goals to win. Philly competed but was basically cooked with 38 minutes left to go, and they seemed to know it deep inside because they started to make a lot more low-percentage plays than they had earlier in the game.
That is why the oft-used hockey phrase "playing with desperation" is a misnomer when it's used in a positive context (as it generally is). A desperate team stops playing the right way and digs a deeper and deeper hole for itself. In short, it gives in to despair. Focused urgency is what is needed, not desperation.
At the 17:25 mark of the second period, Ottawa once again turned a 2-on-1 chance into a goal. Shayne Gostisbehere made a poor decision to pinch in the offensive zone without support. When the play got to the neutral zone, Luke Schenn crossed over from the right side to the left and got beaten to the puck by Michalek.
The Senator now had a lane to speed up the side vacated by Schenn and the defenseman in pursuit and a trailing attacker and backchecking Bellemare soon catching up to the play in the defensive zone. Michalek shot from just above the left circle and beat Mason over the glove. Zack Smith and Curtis Lazar received the assists.
Of the four shots that got past Mason, this was arguably the one for which he had the best chance of making a momentum stop; it wasn't an easy save or a soft goal, but the goalie had a look at it and a chance to stop it from the angle and distance from which it was shot.
Gudas took an undisciplined high-sticking penalty in the final minute of the second period. As the penalty was set to expire early in the third period, Luke Schenn sticked aside a diagonal pass from Ryan that was intended for Michalek. However, Schenn tipped the pass directly into the wheelhouse of Turris in the circle. With the puck laying flat in perfect shooting position, Turris ripped a shot past Mason to extend the Ottawa lead to 4-0. Erik Karlsson drew the secondary assist.
The Flyers had 13 of their 36 shots in the game over the course of the third period, and they tested Anderson better than they did in the second period but it was an exercise in fulitity. Anderson's best stop arguably was a point-black rebound attempt by Michael Raffl as the Austrian drove hard to the net.
The Flyers are to practice at the Skate Zone in Voorhees, NJ on Sunday. The next night, the Carolina Hurricanes come to Wells Fargo Center. Prior to the game, Rod Brind'Amour will be inducted into the Flyers' Hall of Fame.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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