Wrapup: Flyers Crumble in 5-4 Loss to the Wild
The Philadelphia Flyers held four one-goal leads but found a way to lose, 5-4, to the Minnesota Wild at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday evening. The Flyers' season-long issues with close-outs, iill-timed breakdowns, wilting under adversity and giving up goals very shortly after getting scored on all presented on this night once again.
This was a very winnable game. Minnesota was just as sloppy as Philadelphia, especially in the first two periods, and the Flyers capitalized several times. However, this Flyers team simply is not a good enough club to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot and still find a way to win. The Flyers have only won three games since New Year's Day.
"I think tonight was a case where we did some good things obviously, scored some goals but I don’t think we were very strong tonight to be honest with you. Probably a little more fortunate to be in the lead at that position. They cranked it up another level and we certainly didn’t," said Flyers interim head coach Mike Yeo.
Philadelphia has a host of players who have struggled with execution, decision-making and, seemingly confidence. One such player is Ivan Provorov, who seems to be pressing and over-thinking. On this night, there were a couple of costly turnovers and Provorov was on the ice for three Wild goals. A Derick Brassard turnover led directly to a Wild goal just before the end of the first period. Patrick Brown also had one. As a team the Flyers were charged with 15 giveaways. That's a recipe for disaster.
"Right from the drop of the puck, a huge issue. You don’t have to scroll too far into the game you just look at the highlights and see some goals we had pucks on our sticks and opportunities to make plays and we didn’t," Yeo said.
Specific to Provorov's play, Yeo said the player is going through issues similar to many others on the team.
"Provy, for sure, he’s a better player than he’s shown tonight no question. I think that he is probably like a lot of guys right now that we’re very disappointed and frustrated with the way that this season’s gone but you got a choice of how you handle things right now. We can either really get together here and battle through this and become a better team or you can be frustrated going into games not feeling right and next thing you know a mistake happens and things snowball where we can pick each other up.
"I made some mistakes, our whole team made mistakes. This is where we've gotta bail each other out and that’s what good teams do. That [Wild] team made a lot of mistakes, too, but they kept fighting, they kept pushing for each other and then they found a way to win. We didn’t do that. As soon as adversity struck, we crumbled."
Scott Laughton (11th goal of the season) got the Flyers on the board first early in the first period Hart. Closely spaced goals by ex-Flyer Ryan Hartman (20th) and Patrick Brown (3rd) offset. After a bad Philadelphia turnover in the waning seconds of the first period, Frederick Gaudreau scored at 19:56 to send the game to intermission tied at 2-2.
Early in the second period, Travis Konecny (9th goal of the season) gave the Flyers their third one-goal lead of the game. The Wild got it back less than four minutes later on Hartman's second of the game (21st of the season). Late in the period, a Claude Giroux power play goal (18th) made it a fourth one-goal lead for Philadelphia.
In the second half of the third period, the Wild got goals on back-to-back shifts from Matt Boldy (9th) and Jonas Brodin(4th) to quickly go from a 4-3 deficit to a 5-4 lead.
"t’s alarming regardless of who’s making (the costly mistakes), to be honest. This is what winning hockey is and winning hockey might be bearing down getting a puck out of your zone. Winning hockey might be taking a hit to advance the puck to make sure you get that puck deeper or at the same time even if you don’t want to keep it in front of you as opposed to turning it over. These are the things we’re showing on video and will continue to show but its gotta come from them," Yeo said.
That’s what it comes down to right now. We can keep preaching it. We can keep trying to motivate, we can keep pushing it and we will, believe me. I love this group. I believe in this group but they have to grab hold of this and that’s how we’re gonna do it. Because [we can't] if we don’t have complete engagement and complete buy-in to each other. That’s what winning teams do and we’re putting ourselves in a position where we can maybe win games. Structurally we’ve improved, but you play the game to win and we’re not winning. So we've got be better."
Carter Hart stopped 33 of 38 shots, taking the loss. Cam Talbot stopped 25 of 29 Flyers shots.
The Flyers went 1-for-3 on the power play. The Wild went 0-for-1.
Rasmus Ristolainen led the Flyers with 25:44 of ice time and was credited with five hits and five blocked shots, Unfortunately, he screened Hart on the game-winning goal by Brodin (there was actually a double-layered screen on the play). Travis Sanheim was second with 25:06 TOI (one shot on goal on four attempts, two blocked shots, two charged giveaways, minus-two).
Veteran defenseman Justin Braun started the game but was unable to finish it. He is ill with the flu.