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Meltzer's Musings: 10/7/11 |
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After the Flyers opening night 2-1 victory over the Boston Bruins, the studio commentators on Versus discussed whether Philadelphia would have wound up losing a similar type of game last season. I don't know if they'd have lost the game when all was said and done but I do suspect they'd have failed to protect the one-goal lead for two periods. In order to win, the Flyers would have needed a third and possibly fourth goal to come away with the victory.
Last night's victory was a high quality one for a Philadelphia team that has undergone a large-scale overhaul since last season. Opening night is always emotional, and this was Stanley Cup banner night in Boston on top of it. The Flyers also gave up the game's first goal (a circumstance in which they had a 13-14-5 record in the 2010-11 regular season and 1-6 in the playoffs).
When leading after two periods last year, Philly was 38-1-5 -- 16th best winning percentage the NHL -- but the one regulation loss came at the hands of the Bruins. Overall, nine opponents leaguewide managed to at least tie the game at some point in the third period when trailing Philly at the second intermission. That doesn't count the numerous games where the Flyers had a multiple-goal lead after two periods and ended up giving all but the tying goal back in the final stanza.
Was last night's win perfect? By no means. But the Flyers deserved their hard-earned two points on the road against the defending Stanley Cup champions.
First let's look at all the things Philly did well:
* Ilya Bryzgalov was outstanding in his Flyers debut. He made numerous tough saves and got help from his defensemen (especially Kimmo Timonen) a few times when he needed it. The big glove save Bryz made on Marchand is the one that got on all the highlight shows, but there were a couple of even tougher saves he made on partially screened or deflected pucks and he also was very good with his rebound control.
* Timonen was the best defenseman on either team over the last 40 minutes of the game. Even though he played every game last season, Kimmo was often at far less than 100 percent health -- dealing with nagging back, hip and other issues. He still played at a high level much of the time but ran low on energy late in the season. Last night's game was a vintage Timonen performance.
* Chris Pronger looked rusty at times, but that was to be expected. It was only his second game (including preseason) since undergoing back surgery over the summer. He also managed to block five shots, recorded an assist and led the Flyers' in ice time. Can't complain about any of that.
* The rest of the Flyers defense -- including newcomer Andreas Lilja as the sixth defenseman -- turned in solid, workmanlike efforts. The D as a whole (including the forwards) was very, very good when the Flyers nailed down the win in the final minutes.
* Sean Couturier was absolutely tremendous in his NHL debut. It was his line with Matt Read and Scott Hartnell that was on the ice for a key momentum-changing shift in the latter stages of the first period that eventually led to the Flyers' two-goal outburst in the closing minute of the period. Later, Couturier was outstanding on the penalty kill as Philly protected its one-goal lead in the third period. He narrowly missed scoring a shorthanded goal in the third period. As a matter of fact, had the goalie been a pure butterfly stylist instead of the unorthodox Tim Thomas, I think he'd have scored.
* Apart from his nifty power play goal on the rush, Claude Giroux was the most dynamic and creative Flyers player on the ice (along with Jaromir Jagr). I thought that hit from behind by Zdeno Chara was a borderline penalty but Giroux put himself into a dangerous position. Never leave yourself at the mercy of another player not to hit you from behind a few feet from the boards. The flip side of that was that Giroux fearlessly went for the puck and had every right to try to get body position to keep the puck away from Chara and his long reach.
* Jagr didn't take long to record NHL regular season career point number 1,600. He made a perfect lead pass to Giroux, catching his linemate in stride. Apart from achieving that milestone, Jagr also made several subtle but outstanding plays to make sure the puck got through the neutral zone into the Boston defensive zone. He got robbed by Thomas on a bang-bang scoring chance. He even made a nice defensive play on the backcheck to help preserve the lead.
* I loved the way that James van Riemsdyk and Braydon Coburn immediately jumped to the defense of Giroux after the hit by Chara. It was a joke that Mike Milbury said in the Versus studio that the Philadelphia players were in the wrong, even if the hit was not a truly dirty one. Any time the best player on your team (or anyone else, but especially your biggest star) gets bumped from behind near the boards, it is never wrong to stand up for your teammate. It would been wrong NOT to go after Chara. I'd have said the same thing if it were Pronger or another Flyer hitting a Bruin.
* It was good for Jakub Voracek to get his first goal out of the way quickly after struggling to finish chances in the preseason. His turnaround shot in front was a nice play.
* The Flyers showed resiliency. All the sitting around the Fyers did in the locker room during the opening ceremony seemed to affect their legs a little bit. It took Philly until nearly the end of the first period to get their skating legs under them, as they struggled early with breakouts and established little forechecking pressure until the latter stages of the period.
Now for the areas that need the most improvement going forward: cutting down on bad penalties and doing a better job in the faceoff circle.
Last night, the Flyers took four bad penalties (Zac Rinaldo, Danny Briere and one of two by Wayne Simmonds) over the course of the game. The first one led to Boston's lone goal of the game by Brad Marchand, while the Flyers narrowly averted disaster on several occasions in the third period.
Faceoffs have been a bit of an Achilles heel for the Flyers in recent years and this year's club could rank near the bottom of the NHL in that important facet of the game. Last night, the Flyers won an anemic 33 percent of their draws. Thankfully, it did not come back to haunt them in the opener. Even so, it's an area where the club needs to get much better. Even if they don't win 50 percent or more, no team can afford to lose 2 out of every 3. Sooner or later, it's going to bite you.
The Flyers return to action tomorrow night in New Jersey.
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I am still not sure why there was so much secrecy by the Flyers about the status of Matt Walker for last night's game. With all due respect to Walker -- who is a serviceable and physical third-pairing NHL defenseman when healthy -- his presence or absence was not going to alter Boston's approach one iota. I doubt anyone on the Boston side cared at all whether Walker or Lilja was Philly's sixth defenseman last night.
Flyers GM Paul Holmgren insists that Walker is healthy, despite the fact that he had a maintenance day last Sunday, did not practice Tuesday (after a team off-day on Monday) and was not on the ice for the morning skate yesterday.
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Thank you to everyone who participated in yesterday's opening night game thread. To get over 2,000 comments on the board is a nice way to start the season.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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