TURKEY OF A FLORIDA TRIP: FLYERS STUMBLE TO SECOND STRAIGHT LOSS
The Philadelphia Flyers' two-game Thanksgiving week road trip to Florida proved to be a setback after a seven-game stretch of generally solid hockey. In losing 3-1 to the Panthers in Sunrise and 4-2 to the Lightning in Tampa Bay, Philadelphia got outworked for significant stretches of both games.
Last night's game was the worse of the two, but that's because the Lightning are a considerably better team than the Panthers. The Bolts were better able to exploit breakdowns by the Flyers, scoring at even strength, shorthanded, on the power play and into an empty net late in the game.
As with the game against the Panthers, the Flyers started slowly but managed to get through a scoreless first period unscathed. Then they dug themselves a 2-0 hole in the second period, and it was too much from which to recover. The Flyers have still won only once this season when they have not scored first. In the last two games, they've waited until the third period to show the sort of urgency they should have had from the outset.
Defenseman Victor Hedman -- who scored a backbreaking goal in an early-year game last season when the Flyers were trying to reach the .500 mark -- scored a pair of goals for Tampa Bay. The Bolts also got a shorthanded goal from Ondrej Palat and an empty netter from Tyler Johnson.
After starting goaltender Ben Bishop suffered an injury in the morning skate, backup goaltender Anders Lindbäck got the call in net for the Lightning. He was not tested much for the first 50-plus minutes of the game and was working on a shutout until the Flyers scored a pair of too-little-too-late goals in the final two minutes to temporarily cut their deficit from 3-0 to 3-2. Lindbäck finished with 19 saves.
At the other end of the ice, Ray Emery was under siege in segments of the game. He generally did a good job of keeping the team in the game, but the Hedman even strength tally that opened the scoring was a leaky goal from a severe side angle. Emery had the short side post sealed off and there was seemingly nothing at which Hedman could shoot but the puck ended up going in under his arm. Emery, who stopped 31 shots, had little chance on the other two goals he allowed.
The real backbreaker for the Flyers was Palat's shorthanded goal off the fat rebound of a Hedman shot that seemed deliberately measured to produce a rebound. The slow-developing play started with a Kimmo Timonen shot attempt being blocked after a hurried pass from a pressured Claude Giroux and then turned into a 2-on-1 rush. Also of note was the weak backchecking efforts of both Jakub Voracek and Giroux, both of whom basically gave up on the play after skating hard back to their blueline.
Giroux was not the only culprit on the play. However, it is a bit galling that the captain had a somewhat similar sequence in the aforementioned backbreaking play from last year in which Hedman led the counterattacking rush and ended up turning a one-goal deficit into two. In last year's play, Giroux was directly stripped of the puck rather than making a pass to a well-marked point man. After the turnover, he dogged it on the backcheck. This time around, the captain's backchecking work "progressed" from nonchalant to half-hearted and there was less chance of catching up to the eventual goal scorer.
This sort of play was emblematic of too many during the last two games. Where were the second and third efforts by Flyers' players? Where was the oft-discussed "compete level" that ought to be a given for the entire game, and not just for portions of it? Mistakes happen. Opposing teams have their own skilled players who make good plays. That's all part of the game. What's unacceptable is when a team does not hustle, and players stop moving their feet.
Craig Berube has worked long and hard on getting his Flyers' players to be up on their skates right from the outset of a game. They'd made some real progress -- which absolutely played heavily into the 6-0-1 stretch that preceded the current two-game skid -- but they started to regress a bit in stretches late in the winning streak and regressed even further on the Florida road trip.
These Florida trips, at least the Tampa Bay end of them, often seem to be problematic for the Flyers. Last night, Berube fared no better than Peter Laviolette or John Stevens did in coaxing his team to generate sufficient puck movement and support to formulate a sustained attack in the Tampa Bay end of the ice.
For the second time this season (the first time was on opening night against Toronto) Wayne Simmonds received a penalty shot with a chance to put the Flyers ahead. This time, it was late in the first period. The result both times was no goal.
Hedman extended the Tampa lead to 3-0 at the 5:00 mark of the third period. The big Swedish defenseman stationed himself inside the Flyers' penalty killing box and made a nice shot from good shooting range.
In his return to Tampa Bay, Vincent Lecavalier got the Flyers on the board with a power play goal in the final two minutes. He received a crisp pass from Brayden Schenn and quickly one-timed the puck past Lindbäck. Mark Streit received the secondary assist.
Forty seconds later, Streit rifled a point shot home through traffic to cut the gap to one goal with 1:13 left in the third period. Giroux drew the lone assist. The goal was Streit's first as a Flyer. For a defenseman whose number one asset is his heavy shot from the point, that pace needs to be picked up considerably.
The empty net goal that sealed the game came moments after Lecavalier was unable to control the puck at the offensive blueline. Johnson claimed the loose disc and scored.
The Flyers are back in action late tomorrow morning at 11:30 a.m. in their annual Black Friday matinee at the Wells Fargo Center. This year's opponent is the Winnipeg Jets.
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
* Matt Read, who had scored two goals in back-to-back games heading into the Florida trip, was scratched last night with a lower-body injury. He is officially day-to-day. Michael Raffl got back into the lineup after missing two games with the flu and four as a healthy scratch.
* The Flyers attempted 43 shots in this game, but less than half of them made it on net. Tampa blocked a dozen attempts and Flyers shooters missed the net on 10 others.
* The Flyers won only 44 percent of the faceoffs in this game. No Flyers player who took more than three draws won even half of them. Much of the blame on this night lies not with the Flyers' centers but on teammates who got outbattled in the circle when neither pivot was able to win the draw cleanly.
* The Lecavalier power play goal marked the eighth straight game in which the Flyers have scored at least once on the power play. Philly went went 1-for-2 on the man advantage in this game.
* Hedman's power play goal marked the seventh game of the last nine in which the Flyers' penalty kill has yielded at least one opposition power play goal. That wasn't a huge deal while the Flyers were blanking other teams at even strength during most of the winning streak. It's been costly on third period insurance goals in each of the last two games.
* Scott Hartnell led Philly with five shots on goal. He also dropped the gloves with Eric Brewer while the game still scoreless in the second period.
************
THANKSGIVING QUICK HITS
* The final game of the Subway Super Series between the Russian U20 team and squads representing each of the three CHL leagues will be held tonight in Lethbridge, AB. Last night in Red Deer, Flyers prospect Taylor Leier was the brightest spot for Team WHL in a 3-2 loss to the Russian squad.
Things started out well for Team WHL, as Griffin Reinhart scored in the opening minute of the first period. Leier earned the secondary assist on the play. However, the Russians bounced back to take a 2-1 lead by end of the first period.
Early in the second period, with Conner Bleackley in the penalty box, Leier tied the game at 2-2 on a shorthanded goal. The score remained deadlocked until the 3:43 mark of the final stanza, as Alexei Baskov scored his first goal of the Super Series to put the Russians ahead to stay.
Leier was chosen as the Player of the Game for Team WHL. Russian goaltender Ivan Nalimov took the honors for his side after stopping 42 of 44 shots.
* Earlier in the Super Series, Team QMJHL downed the Russians by 3-2 and 4-2 scores. Samuel Morin, the Flyers' first-round pick in the 2013 NHL Draft, had some up and downs in his two games but was a game-high plus-three in the second match. On the positive side, Morin competed hard and got better and better as he got acclimated. On the down side, he had some issues clearing pucks around his feet and also got beaten off a couple of rushes, including one where he got turnstiled at the blueline by Ivan Barbashev on a play that resulted in a goal.
* Scott Laughton captained Team OHL in the Ontario portion of the Super Series. Although the Flyers' 2012 first-round pick is enjoying a dominant OHL season, he and his Super Series team had a frustrating couple of games against the Russians.
In the first game in Oshawa (where Laughton plays for the Generals), the Russians more or less blew the doors off the Ontario team in 5-2 win despite a deceptive 43-22 shot edge for the OHL side. Laughton had no points and was minus-two in the game.
In the second game in Sudbury, Team OHL fired 52 shots on Nalimov -- including a failed penalty shot for Max Domi -- but only found the net twice and went on lose via shootout, 3-2. Russian led 2-0 after the first period until Laughton assisted on a Bo Horvat goal in the opening minute of the second stanza. That was followed up less than two minutes later by a Carter Verhaeghe goal that tied the game.
* Belated congratulations go out to Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren, wife Doreen, son Wes and daughter-in-law Kaitlyn. Last weekend, Kaitlyn gave birth the couple's first child, a healthy baby girl named Mackenzie. As the proud father of an eight-month-old daughter and a soon-to-be five-year-old son, I can relate to the excitement of the parents and grandparents -- and to the lack of sleep thereafter.
* Last but certainly not least, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers and Happy Hannukah as well to the Jewish readers of the site. With the Flyers now on the road for most of the next five weeks, I am currently back in Texas. I'll be back in Philadelphia to cover practices and games shortly after New Years through the remainder of the season, with a return trip to Texas during the Olympic break.
***********
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:
»