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Wrapup:Flyers Lose Strange, Sloppy 5-4 Decision to Coyotes |
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The Philadelphia Flyers forced themselves to go to the comeback well too many times, and dropped a 5-4 regulation decision to the Arizona Coyotes at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday night. The bizarre game was filled with controversial calls but, more tellingly, the Flyers' disorganized play without the puck, high ratio of turnovers (13 charged giveaways) and a subpar night in goal by Steve Mason proved costly.
The Flyers, who have talked repeatedly about the need to come out ready to play, played a poor first period against the Coyotes, finding themselves in the all-too-familiar position of clawing back into the game from a multi-goal deficit. Philly did just that, tying the game at 2-2 in the second period before shooting themselves in the foot again in the period and falling short in another comeback bid.
"There are several things that we weren’t good enough in certain areas," Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol said.
"Number one, the start. We got ourselves a two goal deficit and weren’t very good with the puck there and quite honestly throughout the game we just weren’t good enough without the puck. Some of that is the response from being a little bit sloppy with it and turning it over in poor situations. But there are a lot of areas that we weren’t good enough in tonight.”
The game saw both benches unsuccessfully challenge goals, and a bizarre line rush goal by Martin Hanzal with a fight breaking out behind the play as Jakob Chychrun instigated a fight with Brayden Schenn to avenge a (clean) check moments earlier. The goal gave Arizona a 3-2 lead at 6:31 of the third period.
At 8:10, the Flyers yielded a shorthanded goal as Brad Richardson was pokechecked by Mason, crashed heavily into the goaltender and forced him and the puck over the line. The officials made no initial call, then ruled it a legal goal. After a Flyers challenge, the Situation Room in Toronto ruled that Ivan Provorov had tripped Richardson into the goaltender and the goal stood, making it 4-2.
Earlier the game, however, the Flyers benefitted from a disallowed goal on a play where Laurent Dauphin knocked Steve Mason's stick as he went by the net and the goalie got partially spun just before the goal was scored.
Mason, who stopped 20 of 25 shots, would have liked to have had two Arizona goals back. After an unstoppable Jamie McGinn tap-in off an Andrew MacDonald/Shayne Gostisbehere coverage miscue, Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored on a seeing-eye turnaround shot from the high slot. Late in the third period, ex-Flyer Ryan White scored from a severe side angle as the puck went off Mason's shoulder and into the short side.
The good news for the Flyers was that they continued to show resiliency. Trailing 2-0 in the second period, Dale Weise won a battle behidn the net and fed the puck to Brayden Schenn. Coyotes goalie Louis Domingue (28 saves on 32 shots) made the initial stop but the puck rebounded directly to an oncoming Nick Cousins on the other side for a tap-in goal.
At 15:00 of the second period, the Flyers knotted the score at 2-2. Schenn scored a power play goal as he fell into the crease for the followup of a loose puck after an intiial Shayne Gostisbehere scoring chance. Claude Giroux got the secondary assist.
In the third period, with Philly trailing 4-2, MacDonald cut the gap back to one goal as he threaded a point shot into the net. Provorov and Travis Konecny earned the assists. After the White goal, Wayne Simmonds collected a power play rebound goal assisted by Schenn and Mark Streit to reduce the final deficit to 5-4.
"You can start thinking ‘could have, should have, would have,’ but in reality we’re just not playing good enough hockey right now," Schenn said.
"We really need these two points. These are the ones we really want to have. We don’t want to be behind the eight ball again starting the season. We said before the game that this is going to be a hungry hockey team on the last game of their road trip. They’ve been on the road for a couple of weeks now and probably wanted to end on a good note. Again, our start wasn’t great again tonight. We keep talking about it, but until we start doing something about it, nothing is going to change.”
While the Flyers sporadically generated good shifts, they were not in synch in their two-way game for much of the night -- an all-too common trend so far this season. The pairing of MacDonald and Gostisbehere, both individually and collectively -- is struggling defensively but they've had company.
The Flyers, now 3-4-1 through eight games, host the Penguins on Saturday night.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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