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Flyers Gameday: 3/27/21 vs. NYR; Phantoms, Frozen Four |
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GAME 33: FLYERS VS. RANGERS
Alain Vigneault's Philadelphia Flyers (15-13-4) are home on Saturday afternoon to take on David Quinn's New York Rangers (15-13-4). Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 1:00 p.m. EDT. The game will be televised on NBCSP.
The game is the second of a two-game set between the clubs and the sixth of eight meetings this season. The Flyers are 2-2-1 against the Rangers this season. Three of the four games have gone beyond regulation, with the Rangers winning one via shootout and the Flyers winning two in overtime.
On March 17 at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers dealt out one of the most lopsided and humiliating blowout defeats the Flyers have suffered in franchise history: a 9-0 thrashing. The game included seven unanswered Rangers in a second period nightmare for Philadelphia. Mika Zibanejad scored a natural hat trick and also collected three assists.
On March 25 in Philadelphia, the Rangers once again stomped the Flyers; this time by an 8-3 count. Zibanejad once again compiled a natural hat trick and three assists, while defenseman Adam Fox produced five assists. The Rangers led 6-0 before the game was nearly halfway over. Claude Giroux, Kevin Hayes (PPG), and Sean Couturier (PPG) scored for the Flyers but it wasn't enough to even cut the deficits (6-0 and 7-2) in half.
Flyers Outlook
March in general has been an awful month of hockey for the Flyers, who have just four of 14 games. How bad has it been? The Flyers' all-time franchise record for the most goals allowed in a month is 66 GA in January 1993 (15 GP, 4.40 team GAA). With two games remaining in March, the Flyers (14 GP, 65 GA, 4.64 team GAA) would need back-to-back shutouts to avoid tying or surpassing that dubious record.
Getting back to the current version of the Flyers, the roster is largely the same as the one that had 89 points, a team GAA in the top one-third of the league, and a GPG in the top one-third of the league last season. It's also fundamentally the same team that got within a win of the Eastern Conference Final last season and got off to a 7-2-1 start (despite playing nowhere near the same overall caliber of hockey) to start the belated 2020-21 season. Pretty much ever since the COVID-related mini-pause to the Flyers' season this year, it's been a train wreck on many different fronts.
Team defense -- not just the blueline, but the five-man units as a whole -- has been atrocious. The goaltending was fine early in the season, especially with Brian Elliott, but has been downright poor overall from the Lake Tahoe game onward (except for back-to-back road shutouts against the lowly Buffalo Sabres).
On special teams, the PK has struggled pretty much all season, except for 9-for-10 and 12-for-14 runs that raised hopes of getting on track unless for it to spring a leak anew. On Thursday, the Flyers' PK got torched each of the first three times it was put to work. The Philly power play (ranked 15th overall at 20.4 percent) has been better of late, including two goals on Thursday, but has also gone through some significant droughts and, even in picking up its overall numbers, has had recent letdowns in situations where, short of a goal, at least some chance-creating momentum was needed.
The Flyers have been caught in the East Division standings by the Rangers, who now have an identical overall record and legitimately are trending in the right direction as Philly free falls. Philly is now 10 points behind Pittsburgh in the standings (the Penguins face the Sabres again on Saturday after dealing them a 4-0 shutout loss on Thursday to run Buffalo's winless streak to 15 straight games). They remain three points behind the Boston Bruins but Boston now holds three games in hand.
On Friday, the Flyers held practice at the Skate Zone in Voorhees; the club's first bonafide practice in two weeks due to the ultra-compacted schedule. The team will start the same lineup combinations and defense pairs as they did on Thursday. This was after all four forward lines and all three D pairs had combo changes on Thursday from the ones that played on Monday and Tuesday. Brian Elliott will get the start in goal on Saturday.
Rangers Outlook
New York has won three games in a row and four of their last five. Igor Shesterkin picked up the win in goal on Thursday, and is expected to get the nod again on Saturday afternoon.
The Rangers have scored three hat tricks against the Flyers. In addition to Zibanejad's back-to-back three-goal, six-point games against Philadelphia (who have almost singlehandedly helped Zibanejad get back on track after a disastrous offensive start), Chris Kreider had one in Philly earlier this season.
Adam Fox, who missed the game in the Flyers overtime win at MSG, has been outstanding in the games since his return. Meanwhile, Ryan Strome brings a seven-game. Pavel Buchenich leads the Rangers with 31 points (13g, 18a) in 31 games. The deadly Artemi Panarin (29 points in 20 games) has 10 points in his last six games and has racked up seven points (2g, 5a) plus a shootout goal in four games against Philadelphia this season.
Late in Saturday's game, Flyers defenseman Sam Morin pummeled Rangers forward Brendan Lemieux and may have accidentally pulled his hair in the tussle. There wasn't much leaguewide sympathy for Lemieux -- who, like father Claude before him, has become one of the NHL's most hated players among his opponents -- but Morin received a fine from the NHL on Friday for unsportsmanlike conduct. Thursday's game also saw a fight between Brendan Smith and the Flyers' Nicolas Aube-Kubel.
Projected lineups
FLYERS
25 James van Riemsdyk - 24 Sean Couturier - 86 Joel Farabee
28 Claude Giroux - 13 Kevin Hayes - 93 Jake Voracek
23 Oskar Lindblom - 19 Nolan Patrick - 11 Travis Konecny
12 Michael Raffl - 21 Scott Laughton - 62 Nicolas Aube-Kubel
9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
6 Travis Sanheim - 5 Phil Myers
55 Sam Morin - 53 Shayne Gostisbehere
37 Brian Elliott
[79 Carter Hart]
PP1: Giroux, Patrick, Farabee, Voracek, Provorov.
PP2: Hayes, Couturier, JVR, Konecny, Gostisbehere.
Scratches: 56 Erik Gustafsson (healthy).
Injured reserve: 8 Robert Hägg (shoulder, 2-4 weeks from 3/17/21), 48 Morgan Frost (shoulder surgery).
COVID-19 protocol: None.
RANGERS
20 Chris Kreider - 93 Mika Zibanejad – 89 Pavel Buchnevich
10 Artemi Panarin - 16 Ryan Strome - 24 Kaapo Kakko
13 Alexis Lafreniere - 72 Filip Chytil - 12 Julien Gauthier
48 Brendan Lemieux - 17 Kevin Rooney - 43 Colin Blackwell
55 Ryan Lindgren - 23 Adam Fox
79 K'Andre Miller - 8 Jacob Trouba
25 Libor Hajek - 42 Brendan Smith
31 Igor Shesterkin
[40 Alexandar Georgiev]
PP1: Panarin, Zibanejad, Kreider, Strome, Fox.
PP2: Kakko, Chyti, Buchnevich, Miller, Trouba.
Scratches: 33 Phil Di Giuseppe (COVID recovery), 64 Vitali Kravtsov (healthy).
Injured reserve: 27 Jack Johnson (hand surgery).
COVID-19 protocol: 21 Brett Howden.
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Laczynski Leads Phantoms Over Binghamton
Rookie Lehigh Valley Phantoms forward Tanner Laczynski tallied a hat trick to spur his team to a 3-2 road victory over the Binghamton Devils on Friday night in Newark, NJ. Laczynski tallied goals at even strength, on a power play and then on a shorthanded breakaway to erase deficits of 1-0 and 2-1 before putting the Phantoms ahead to stay.
The even strength goal, which briefly tied the score at 1-1 at 6:45 of the second period, was scored from the right circle. The power play goal, tying the game at 2-2 early in the third period, was a high to the far side snipe from the left circle. Laczynski saved the best for last. The game-winning shorthanded breakaway goal saw him move left, deke as if he was going to his backhand, pull the puck between his legs and then flip it over goalie Gilles Senn; highlight reel stuff.
The game-winning Laczynski shorthanded goal came with the Phantoms on a five-minute penalty kill after rookie winger Zayde Wisdom was tossed from the game after jumping and thrashing Binghamton's Graeme Clarke. Wisdom received an instigation minor, a fighting major and a game misconduct while Clarke got only a roughing minor.
I'm not exactly sure how referees Jordan Deckard and Beau Halkidis derived this set of calls. First of all, Wisdom was responding to being chopped (which drew no call at all, unless the slash was labeled as roughing instead). It was the slash that provoked the fight. Secondly, a fight involves two players. If they saw the situation as Wisdom attacking a defenseless or unwilling-to-fight opponent, they could have imposed a match penalty under the Aggressor Penalty. But the Binghamton player was not unwilling. He simply received all the punishment. A more accurate call set would have been this: two for slashing, five for fighting on Clarke, two for roughing, two for instigation, five for fighting and a game misconduct for Wisdom.
Wisdom, who was clearly under the skin of various Devils players not just in this game but stemming back to previous ones, was a marked man all night before the clash with Clarke. Binghamton players hit him every chance they had -- including a big hit near the benches in the first period, from which Wisdom got up and further infuriated Devs players by laughing at the hit. Wisdom kept right on playing his usual physical style, and it was clear there was a lot of chirping going on in both directions. Things finally bubbled over in the third period after Clarke slashed Wisdom as he turned to skate back toward the D zone.
Less pugnaciously than his 18-year-old teammate, Phantoms forward Max Willman also had an active game on Friday. He had a breakaway chance in the first period, was the one who helped spring Laczynski on his shorthanded game-winner, was part of a 2-on-1 rush, came up with a vital clear late in the five-minute kill and occupied the puck as the final seconds ticked off the clock.
The first Laczynski goal came on a shift where the Devils were hemmed in for a prolonged stretch and were unable to change lines. Chris Bigras kept the play going and passed to Laczynski. Senn wasn't able to get enough of Laczynski's right circle shot to keep it from going in the net.
On the Laczynski power play marker early in the third period, the assists went to Isaac Ratcliffe and defenseman Logan Day (who later had the secondary assist on the shorthanded GWG). This was a left-circle shot from the right-handed shooting Laczynski that beat Senn high to the glove side.
Laczynski had been snakebitten early in the season in the goal-scoring department; not lacking for goal opportunities but unable to bury one. Finally, this past Sunday, he broke through for third period and overtime goals in a home win against the WB/S Penguins. After last night, he now has a five-goal week in three games.
On Wednesday of this week, Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher said that he thinks a couple of Phantoms players who missed time with injuries are close to being ready to be called up to the NHL once they get in some more game reps. Laczynski meets this description, as does Wade Allison. Linus Sandin is also among the Phantoms who have dealt with injuries this season.
Speaking of injuries, rookie Phantoms defenseman Egor Zamula is day-to-day after getting hobbled from a shot block in Wednesday's home loss to the Hershey Bears. It looked at the time like it could have been worse. Zamula could miss the rest of the weekend but shouldn't be out for long.
There was also good news in net for the Phantoms. Alex Lyon played quite well as the game moved along. He stopped 33 of 36 shots in his second game of the week.
Playing his first full hockey game in over a calendar year in Wednesday's game against Hershey, Lyon was unsurprisingly not very sharp. He barely saw a puck in the first period and, thereafter, had the dreaded combination of a couple funky-looking goals go in plus a couple where he had little chance while his team outshot its opponent at the other end in all three periods. Those can be the hardest games for any goalie, but especially after not playing a full game in so long.
Now that Lyon's played a couple full games, he is more viable to potentially get a spot start for the Flyers to give Brian Elliott a rest while Carter Hart tries to sort out the mechanical fine-tuning and confidence-related (there has been some real bad body language) issues he needs to work on.
The Phantoms and Devils won't have to wait long at all to square off again. They rematch on Saturday, with the venue shifting to the PPL Center in Allentown.
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Flyers Prospect Frozen Four Roundup
The Michigan Wolverines were compelled on Friday to withdraw from the NCAA Frozen Four tournament due to a COVID-19 protocol within the team. It was a crummy way for Flyers 2019 first-round Cam York's sophomore season (and collegiate career, if he signs a contract with the Flyers this spring) to end.
As a result of Michigan's withdrawal from the tournament, Noah Cates and his Minnesota Duluth team automatically move on to play tournament favorite North Dakota (featuring Flyers prospect Gavin Hain) tonight in the NCAA Midwest Regional Final in Fargo, ND. North Dakota dispatched underdog American International on Friday evening, 5-1.
At 1:00 p.m. ET today, while the Flyers are playing the Rangers, 2018 first-round pick Jay O'Brien and the Boston University Terriers will play St. Cloud State in the NCAA Northeast Regional Semifinal in Albany, NY. Tomorrow, Jack St. Ivany and the BC Eagles will play the winner of this game in the Northeast Regional Final.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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