If the Flyers had played better against the Islanders and Ottawa, I wouldn't be at all concerned about the result of last night's game. The Flyers' energy and work ethic were better against Toronto -- I even thought they had better puck movement on a couple of their power plays -- but they were very sloppy and it came back to bite them.
Here's how it goes in hockey: When you are winning, sometimes you fall into some bad habits that you get away with for awhile. Eventually, it catches up to you. It then takes some time to sort out the problems and you lose some games that you probably would have won earlier (especially when the opponent is a hot club). It didn't help that much of the Flyers team has the flu and there are still quite a few banged-up players despite the four-day schedule break.
Toronto is playing good hockey right now. I was surprised that the club had so much energy left in the third period, given that they were playing on back-to-back nights. Today's
Daily Drop at Versus.com talks about the Leafs' surge since the All-Star break and long-term outlook.
I kind of figured beforehand that penalties and defensive sloppiness might be a problem last night. First of all, that's not uncommon after a long break and especially when you are coming off a game where the effort was lacking. Last night, there were guys trying to do a little too much. Secondly, that's part and parcel of what happens during one of those downturns that every team experiences during a season.
For the Flyers, there were some positive steps taken last night. It was great to see Kris Versteeg score a pair of goals against his former team. He and Mike Richards seem to be establishing chemistry now that they've had a stretch of days to practice together.
Also on the positive end, I thought that James van Riemsdyk look surprisingly good despite playing through a lower body injury that was originally slated to keep him out of the lineup before Jeff Carter (flu) was scratched. Nikolay Zherdev had his share of strong shifts for the second straight game. The Briere line -- which had a bad night on the stat sheet -- looked close to breaking loose offensively. They came within a whisker several times of potting a third Flyers go-ahead goal in the game, but just couldn't quite get one past James Reimer. The Toronto netminder played a very strong game.
Regarding Sergei Bobrovsky, the Flyers' rookie definitely should have had that last Toronto goal, and the sequence ending in Dion Phaneuf's late second period goal was also partially on the goalie. He also made about a half dozen ten-bell saves over the course of the game. There are flaws in Bobrovsky's game (what goalie, especially young ones, don't have them?) that the league is aware of and he needs to work through. Why should anyone be surprised by any of this?
Defensively, the Flyers were atrocious last night. Chris Pronger had several bad turnovers that seemed to be a product of the hand/wrist injury he is playing through. Sean O'Donnell had a horrific night -- he's had a few of those lately -- and Andrei Meszaros once again couldn't stay out of the penalty box. Meanwhile, the defensive support from the forwards was often lacking. I was hoping to see this area improve as the game rolled along, but it really didn't. Also, the Flyers have now been outscored 11-4 in the third period over their last seven games.
I'll close back on the positive side. You can see that Meszaros' offensive confidence is growing again, and he had a brilliant shift where he almost put the club ahead in the third period. Ville Leino made a couple strong backchecking plays and appeared to be skating a little better with his wonky hip.
In short, I think Philly can get back on the winning track sooner rather than later, but there's a lot of work to be done to correct the issues that arose even when the club was still racking up the points. This, too, shall pass.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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