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Wrap: Flyers Comeback Yields One Point in 4-3 OT Loss to Columbus |
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Wrap: Flyers Comeback Yields One Point in 4-3 OT Loss to Columbus
A two-goal comeback by the Philadelphia Flyers in the third period sent the game to overtime but Philly ultimately fell, 4-3, to the Columbus Blue Jackets at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday night. The Blue Jackets raised their record to 16-10-2, while the Flyers dropped to 11-12-3.
Seth Jones scored twice for the Blue Jackets (4th and 5th of the season), including the winning goal in overtime. Brandon Dubinsky (3rd) and Boone Jenner (6th) also scored for the Blue Jackets. Artemi Panarin had a pair of assists.
Travis Sanheim tallied the two goals (1st and 2nd) that forced OT, supplementing a first period goal by Claude Giroux (10th). Travis Konecny had two assists for the Flyers.
"He’s a very smart player," Giroux said of Sanheim. "When he sees an opportunity to go, he joins the rush. For a defenseman, his skills are pretty high. When he plays with confidence, he’s a very dangerous player."
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 23 of 26 shots, getting his 11th win of the season. Anthony Stolarz made several outstanding saves but let in a leaky first goal and had little to no chance on a couple others as he stopped 26 of 30 shots.
Andrew MacDonald (minus-3, 20:54 of ice time across 25 shifts) and Robert Hägg (minus-2, 19:41 of ice time over 24 shifts each spent five-plus minutes on the PK. Ivan Provorov (25:12 across 29 shifts) led in ice time, with Shayne Gostisbehere skating 20:37. Radko Gudas, who took two penalties himself but logged 3:17 of shorthanded time over the other three kills, finished with 15:59 of ice time. Sanheim played 12:38 across 19 shifts (no power play time, 19 seconds of PK time, 12:19 of even strength time).
For much of the game, the Flyers were sloppy with the puck (14 charged giveaways, plus 9 more turnovers in which Columbus was credited with a takeaway). They struggled to put pucks on the net against a shaky-looking Bobrovsky. In the second period, the Flyers took three minor penalties, and five overall in the first 40 minutes of the game.
"When you take a lot of penalties like that, it kills the momentum. You have guys taking a lot more ice time and some guys sitting on the bench, and it’s tough when you’re sitting on the bench. Your legs are not going, if we move our legs, and keep in better position, we won’t have to take those penalties," Giroux said.
The Flyers also had two would-be goals overturned: a late first-period fluky goal by Sean Couturier (accidentally deflected short-side high by Seth Jones) that was wiped off on a challenge by Columbus head coach John Tortorella. The goal was correctly disallowed on a clear-cut offside on the entry seconds earlier. A third period disallowed power play goal was more frustrating: a result of a too-hasty whistle with a loose puck around the net.
Sanheim scored a pair of goals to tie the game in the third period, twice jumping into the rush -- something he's been doing effectively, and finally got rewarded -- to take a pass from a teammate and beat Bobrovsky at 12:24 and 14:29 of the third period.
"I think I read the play. We had clean possession going into the zone on both plays, and I like to think at any point in the game I’m going to make that play, so, I thought they were pretty smart reads and not that high risk," Sanheim said.
On the first tally, Sanheim was led by a nice pass by Giroux (22nd assist). Sanheim then moved to his backhand with Bobrovsky committing and tucked the puck into the cage to cut the gap to 3-2. On the tying goal, the pass came across from Jakub Voracek, and Sanheim scored on a rising shot from the left slot.
The Flyers actually held a short-lived early lead. Giroux (10th goal of the season), carried the puck up the left wing on a 2-on-1 rush. From the left circle, he sniped a shot upstairs over Bobrovsky. Travis Konecny and Couturier got the assists at 5:58 of the first period.
It took Columbus only 1:08 to tie the game on a goal off the rush. The Flyers didn't play the rush very well but Jones' partially fanned shot was one that Stolarz clearly needed to stop. The goalie got crossed up, stick between his own legs and space between his pads as the knuckleball squeezed right on through him and into the net at 7:08. Oliver Bjorkstrand and Dubinsky got the assists.
The Flyers took way too many penalties during the game but a good job on the ensuing kills in going 5-for-5. The team killed 15 penalties in a row, using a more aggressive approach. They also got saves when they needed them, such as when Stolarz flashed the leather to snap a Panarin blast from the right circle out of the air. Earlier, he denied the red-hot Cam Atkinson on a partial breakaway while the shorthanded Blue Jackets were killing the game's first penalty.
As the first period progressed, the Flyers played with fire due to sloppy puck management. They finally got burned after a turnover ended with Dubinsky tipping home a Scott Harrington point shot for a 2-1 lead at 18:08. The overturned Couturier goal due to the offside challenge took a Flyers goal off the board -- correctly -- and sent the Blue Jackets to the locker room with a 2-1 lead and a 13-6 shot advantage.
The Flyers had to play shorthanded three times in the opening 12 minutes of the second period, taking themselves out of any sort of 5-on-5 rhythm thereafter. Philly had back-to-back power plays late in the second period, and took 1:30 of carryover man advantage time into the third period. Columbus outshot the Flyers, 12-5, in the second period.
"Our second period was sloppy. We cleaned up a couple little things coming out of the first, but we shot ourselves in the foot in a couple other areas. We just had too many hole plays in the second period and had to kill too many penalties. When you kill three in a row that does a lot of things on the negative side to your hockey team. Those are things that we addressed after the hockey game and the positives out of the third period you gotta carry those with as well. We addressed both sides of the coin tonight," Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol said.
"It’s disappointing the way it ended. I mean, I won’t lie to you. That’s a hard way to lose the extra point. We felt good about battling back and the way we did it in the third period, and got our game going. It hurts a little bit to have it end the way it did right off the opening draw. One of the things, Coots and Provy are around that puck and they’re a huge reason why we were in OT, because they played a hell of a game. They were really good throughout the first sixty minutes. It hurts a little bit."
The Flyers finally started to get more attack going in the third period. Couturier was unable to finish into a wide-open net a moment before a quick whistle with the puck still free ahead of a Wayne Simmonds follow-up that crossed the goal line. The Flyers finished 0-for-3 on the power play.
"He blew the whistle way too quick there. I don’t think he ever saw the puck and it was loose. That’s unfortunate but it is what it is," Couturier said of the second no-goal ruling.
Looking for anything that might work, Hakstol shortened his bench and mixed several line combinations in the third period.
At 5:15 of the third period, Columbus forged a 3-1 lead on a Jenner shot that beat Stolarz under the crossbar. Panarin got the lone assist. That set the stage for Sanheim's latter third-period heroics.
Right off the bat in the opening shift of OT, Couturier tried to bank the puck off the boards back to Provorov but put it in his skates. The puck was then lost. Atkinson passed it to Jones with Provorov slow to react. Jones had time and space to measure an almost unstoppable tracer of a shot that beat Stolarz high to end the game at the 10-second mark of OT.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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