With an afternoon game tomorrow against Edmonton and the Flyers submerged in an offensive abyss, Craig Berube jumbled his forward line combinations again and scaled back on some of the skating at practice on Friday.
As of now, it looks like the Flyers will feature the following combinations to start the game.
B. Schenn - Giroux - Read
Hartnell - Lecavalier - Simmonds
Raffl - Couturier - Voracek
Rosehill - Hall - Rinaldo
Timonen - Coburn
Grossmann - Streit
Gustafsson - L. Schenn
Mason
[Emery]
Scratches: Downie (concussion, skated today), Newbury (healthy), Meszaros (healthy), Gill (healthy).
QUICK HITS
* Team chairman Ed Snider, who spoke to Claude Giroux after last night's closed-door players meeting, attended practice at the Skate Zone today. He addressed the media today, saying that he understands the fans' frustrations and shares in them about the club's inability to score goals.
Snider said that he was not there last not to chastise anyone and tried to be encouraging to Giroux in conversation. Today, Snider noted that the player managed to be a point-per-game player last season -- after a tough start -- while wearing the C on his chest. Snider added that it's not his place to speculate on where Giroux or other players' mindsets are right now in terms of why they are individually and collectively playing with such little confidence.
Snider did not deny that there is a re-evaluation process going on with the team but said that when the team made the change from Peter Laviolette to Craig Berube, they did so with the understanding that the coach needed a reasonable amount of time to implement his own ideas and correct bad habits.
"I’ve been in the game for 47 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Snider. "We certainly know that we’re more talented than we’re showing on the ice. I think the question is, ‘How talented are we?’ ”
* After practice, Berube said that the team simply hasn't generated enough chances the last few games -- and hasn't done so since the earlier portion of the Anaheim game and spurts of the first period against Carolina. The team needs to basically start the offensive process over again of winning battles, gaining puck possession, moving their feet and establishing a forecheck. Without re-establishing those fundamentals and then getting pucks and traffic to the net, they will continue not to score goals of any kind.
* Claude Giroux said "frustration" was the reason why he left the arena last night without speaking to the media following the team meeting last night. Predictably, he downplayed the frequent changing of line combinations being a possible contributing factor to his offensive struggles and those of the entire team.
Said Giroux, "The crowd starts booing, and obviously you put a little more pressure (on) and you want to do a little more."
* Steve Downie skated at practice today, wearing a full face shield. He is not ready to return tomorrow but there is a chance he could be ready for Tuesday when the Flyers embark on their three-in-four road trip.
* The Flyers have scored just two goals in their last four games, and are averaging 1.47 goals per game on the season. By way of comparison, even the 1930-31 Philadelphia Quakers -- perhaps the worst team in NHL history -- managed 1.73 goals per game.
************
The Philadelphia Flyers fell to 4-10-1 on the 2013-14 season, getting shut out 3-0 by Martin Brodeur and the New Jersey Devils at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday night. An early first-period deflection goal by Adam Henrique was supplemented by an early third-period deflection goal by (of all players) Cam Janssen plus an empty netter by Jaromir Jagr in the final 1.3 seconds.
Brodeur made 22 saves in recording his 12th career shutout against the Flyers. To be generous to Philly, maybe four were anything other than unscreened perimeter shots.
What does a hockey team do when it can't carry the puck into the zone, and it can't get pucks in deep and create opportunities off the forecheck? It struggles to score goals, and even getting more than a few isolated scoring chances is a rarity.
It has grown tiresome to talk about the Flyers entering third periods -- as they did again tonight for the 14th time in 15 games -- in position to come away with one or two points if they could get one more crunch-time goal than the opposition. It's tiresome to talk about defensive improvements because, while this team has improved in cutting down opposition scoring chances, much of the credit for the aforementioned statistic goes to the Philadelphia goaltenders.
Plain and simple, a team needs to generate some goals at some point. Right now it even feels pointless to talk about getting more traffic to the net and getting shots through. While this is an issue, a much bigger problem is puck possession; or the lack thereof.
Head coach Craig Berube has talked repeatedly about players needing to skate quicker and think quicker, and then things like the breakout and forecheck will look better. There were some modest improvements in that area a few weeks ago, but the team has gone right back where it was before.
Feet moving? No, more like inertia.
There were four sequences in this game that, in my opinion, stood as microcosms of the game and the season:
* On all three Flyers power plays, they got embarrassingly outwork by the New Jersey penalty killers. Time and time again, there were errant passes intended for stationary forwards, followed by New Jersey having little trouble intercepting pucks and getting easy clears. In one especially galling sequence, a single New Jersey penalty killer was outnumbered 3-on-1 in the Philadelphia zone and still was not driven off the puck.
* On a second period forechecking sequence, Wayne Simmonds made a strong initial play to get in on Marek Zidlicky and get the defenseman in trouble on the wall as he was forced onto his backhand.
If the closest Flyers forward, Sean Couturier, had his feet moving, he could have come over with support and the Flyers may very well have had a scoring chance. Instead, Zidlicky fended off Simmonds just long enough for a New Jersey player to come over with support and win the battle. New Jersey chipped the puck out, and any chance at sustained time in the offensive zone was over.
Routine sequence? Yes, for sure. But this sort of thing happened time and time again, all game long. Meanwhile, too many of the Flyers dump in attempts were right to Brodeur; which meant the puck was out of the zone a second later.
* Do you want to talk about puck possession? There was a single shift late in the second period where Jagr singlehandedly occupied the puck in the Flyers' end of the ice for a good 20 seconds or so. That was roughly about how much time Claude Giroux and his various linemates -- Berube jumbled combos again throughout the game in a vain attempt to find a spark -- were able to hold the puck on their stick combined all night.
* On the second New Jersey goal, Flyers defenseman Andrej Meszaros got ridden off the disc and lost his stick. He was indecisive about whether to retrieve his stick or stay with his man. Moments later, Janssen deflected an Adam Larsson shot for his fourth career NHL goal in his 313th career NHL game.
It would be one thing if the Flyers -- who have averaged 1.47 goals per game this season and have scored two or fewer goals in 14 of 15 games and one or none in eight -- were showing signs of getting close to finally breaking through offensively. In reality, the opposite is the case.
Forget about turning defense into offensive counterttacks, because that just ain't happenin' right now. Meanwhile, they are generating so few chances off their forecheck that I would consider it progress just to spend the majority of back-to-back shifts in the offensive zone even if no shots resulted from it. The less said about the power play right now, the better.
The Flyers play the Oilers on Saturday afternoon at the Wells Fargo Center before embarking on a road trip. Game time is 1 p.m.
GAME NOTES
* The Flyers held a closed-door team meeting after the game. When the locker room doors opened, club president Ed Snider was in conversation with Claude Giroux just outside the locker room. Giroux ultimately left without speaking to reporters.
* Scott Hartnell, who had not been taking many bad penalties so far this season, took a pair of awful ones tonight. If it had been my decision to make, he would not have seen the ice again in this game after the second one; a neutral zone interference call just 33 seconds after Janssen gave New Jersey a 2-0 lead. Berube must have viewed it differently. Hartnell ended up skating 20:03 of ice time over 21 shifts.
* Nicklas Grossmann was selected as tonight's third star. In 21:37 of ice time, he had three blocks and was credited with one hit (although there probably could have been about three additional ones where he finished his check effectively but was not given a hit). Grossmann was one of the few Flyers defenseman who was able to go muscle-to-muscle with Jaromir Jagr and take the future Hall of Famer off the puck.
* The Flyers won 55 percent of the faceoffs tonight (29 for 53), led by Giroux's 11-for-16. However, the Flyers did not win any power play faceoffs, and that further played into their puck possession problems on the man advantage.
* Expect Luke Schenn to get back into the lineup on Saturday, and Andrej Meszaros to return to the healthy scratch list. Meszaros was minus-three in just 13:10 of ice time and lost the puck and his stick on the sequence leading up to the second New Jersey goal.
* Tonight's blueline ice time distribution: Braydon Coburn 22:47, Mark Streit 22:47, Kimmo Timonen 22:03, Grossmann 21:37, Meszaros 13:10, Hal Gill 10:59. Based upon the fact that Berube really only had two pairs (Timonen-Coburn, Grossmann-Streit) going much of the night, I think the odds are good that the more offensive minded Erik Gustafsson also gets back in next game, and Gill sits.
POST-GAME QUOTEBOOK
CRAIG BERUBE: "It’s not a hard game. It’s the competitiveness and a will to win and doing all the little things right to win, and right now we’re not good enough, we’re not doing good enough. That’s the bottom line."
BERUBE: "I think there are some games where you can go back and the power play looked good and the puck didn’t just go in. But on a consistent, nightly basis you have to outwork the penalty killing of the other team and you have to create momentum for your team, and they did not do that tonight.”
ANDREJ MESZAROS (on 2nd NJ goal): " I didn’t want to get [my stick] because there was a guy in front of the net and I wasn’t sure so I went there and it hit my skate and went in, unfortunately.”
HAL GILL" [We need to start] battling for a teammate. battling for a teammate. You get the puck and get it deep and have guys going and work off the forecheck. There aren’t many plays that score off the rush anymore. Teams are too good and they play a good system. Jersey is definitely a team who does that. We have to generate goals off the forecheck."
WAYNE SIMMONDS: "When things aren’t going for you, you tend to look for the extra play. But when things are going for you, you just throw things at the net and you get bounces, whether it’s off other teams’ skates and sticks, you know the dirty goals. I think that’s where we have to start, it all starts in practice tomorrow, I think we have to come to practice tomorrow and we have to stop in front of the net and bury every puck we can.”
*************
On the International Ice Hockey Federation's official Web site, I take an in-depth look at one of the many innovations that the late Fred Shero brought to the NHL: studying and adapting European hockey tactics to fit the small-rink game. For more on Shero's contributions in the realm of studying and adapting international hockey to the NHL,
click here.
Kindle users: Please sign up for Flyers Buzz. For more information
click here.
Click below to follow me on Twitter:
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»