Last night at the Wells Fargo Center, the Philadelphia Flyers played a strange -- but entertaining -- game against the Nashville Predators in a 4-3 shootout loss. Both games against Nashville this season ended up being decided by skills competition. The Flyers won the first one in Nashville. The Preds returned the favor in Philly.
Brayden Schenn, Andrej Meszaros and Wayne Simmonds (power play) tallied for the Flyers. Eric Nystrom, David Legwand (power play) and Shea Weber (power play) scored for Nashville in regulation.
Steve Mason turned back 34 of 37 shots in regulation and overtime, while Predators counterpart Carter Hutton stopped 27 of 30 Flyers shots.
In the shootout, neither team was able to pot a goal in the first four rounds. Vincent Lecavalier, Claude Giroux, Michael Raffl and Matt Read were unable to convert for Philly, while Steve Mason stopped Nashville's Craig Smith, Legwand, Seth Jones and Gabriel Bourque in succession.
Thereafter, the shootout turned into a goal-a-thon.
In round five, Brayden Schenn scored for the Flyers. Matt Cullen kept the game alive for the Preds. In round six, Sean Couturier scored to again put Philly one save away from the win. Nashville defenseman Ryan Ellis responded with a goal.
In round seven, Simmonds took himself out a little too wide up the right side and Hutton ended up with an easy save. In the bottom of the round, Nashville defenseman Roman Josi put a slick move on Mason and slide the puck home to give his team the win.
On one hand, the Flyers were lucky to come away with even one point from the game.
The club needed an Andrej Meszaros goal in the waning seconds of the second period to forge a 2-2 tie and then a Wayne Simmonds power play goal late in regulation to send the game to overtime.
Comebacks have become a way of hockey life this Flyers team of late. The team has already won eight games they've trailed at some point in the third period, which is one away from tying the all-time franchise record. The comebacks have happened over a stunningly short span of time: all have taken place in games played since the start of the team's post-Thanksgiving six-game road trip. Last night, the Flyers came agonizingly close to their ninth.
After the game, Flyers coach Craig Berube said that the biggest thing he was unhappy with was the Flyers' board work in the game. Nashville owned the walls in the Philadelphia zone, and the Flyers were not able to pin Preds players to the boards, prevent Nashville from cycling the puck for extended amounts of time. Additionally Philly lost most of the 50-50 pucks in their own zone where it was one player from each side going into corners.
Something else that proved costly in the game for the Flyers was ill-timed penalties. Nashville is a team that lives and dies on its power play to generate the bulk of its scoring. Although the Flyers' penalty killing had been on a tremendous hot streak coming into the game, they put themselves in position to fail against Nashville's better shooters, and they paid the price.
In the first period, Kimmo Timonen took a boarding minor with the Flyers already shorthanded 5-on-4 with 1:14 left to kill. The team survived the two-man disadvantage portion, but then made a fatal mistake. Chris VandeVelde had an open opportunity to clear the puck down the ice but elected instead to try and carry the puck up the right side. He turned it over. Seconds later, an open Legwand fired an unstoppable shot home from the opposite side before Mason had a prayer of getting over and getting set.
In the third period, Nicklas Grossmann took a careless high-sticking double minor after his stick bloodied Patric Hörnqvist's mouth. Nashville scored on the ensuing four-minute power play -- in the first half of it, too, leaving an additional two minutes of attacking opportunity.
On the goal, the deadly Weber had time to wind up and fire from the point. In the blink of an eye, the puck was in the back of the net.
The two Nashville power play goals forced Philly to play comeback hockey yet again.
On the other hand, the Flyers were unlucky not to win the game in regulation and in both the overtime and the skills competition phases. There were stretches of play where the Flyers were the dominant team and Nashville goaltender Hutton came up with several freak luck saves that are goals 99.9 percent of the time.
In the first period, the Flyers controlled the play for the opening 10 minutes. They had their feet moving and were able to hit the blueline with speed several times and to force turnovers on their forecheck.
At the 1:26 mark, Brayden Schenn won a left circle faceoff cleanly back to Meszaros. The defenseman, whose long-lost offensive confidence has been restored in the last few weeks, made a strong move to skate the puck toward the slot. All Nashville eyes were on the Flyers' defenseman and players froze in their tracks. Meszaros then gave the puck to Simmonds, who found Schenn all alone near the left post for a tap-in goal.
The goal was Schenn's 13th of the season and sixth in the last 10 games.
Unfortunately for the Flyers, the game started to get away from them in the second half of the first period, and they ended up skating off with a 2-1 deficit to the first intermission.
A defensive coverage breakdown by the Claude Giroux line -- particularly Raffl -- and Meszaros created some open space, and Nystrom slipped behind Meszaros to receive a pass from Bourque and re-direct it home from point blank range. Weber earned his first of two assists in the game on the play. That was supplemented five-plus minutes later by the Legwand power play goal, assisted by Mike Fisher and Weber.
In the second period, there was sequence where Hutton was hopelessly caught behind the net and the puck came out to Michael Raffl in point blank range. Somehow, Raffl's shot got partially blocked and fluttered in at knuckleball speed, enabling the goaltender to (barely) get back in time to make the save.
Shortly thereafter, Lecavalier had a wide open chance in front where Hutton appeared to be dead-to-rights but made a desperation save to keep the Predators ahead by a goal.
Finally, in the waning seconds of the middle stanza, Meszaros rushed in with the puck and fired a rocket home from the left side to tie the game at 2-2 with less than five seconds remaining in the period.
The Grossmann double minor and the ensuing Weber power play goal put the Predatos ahead 3-2 with 14:50 left in the third period. The Predators protected the lead until, with 3:04 left on the game clock, Fisher went to the box for a defensive zone slash on Jakub Voracek. A moment later, Weber rammed Voracek into the boards from behind, but only one penalty was called.
It should be noted, by the way, that Voracek was not used at all in the shootout.
Mason was pulled for an extra attacker during the Flyers' powerplay, making it a 6-on-4. With 1:44 remaining in regulation, Simmonds tipped home a puck to tie the game. Timonen and Scott Hartnell earned the assists. The game went to OT>
In the OT, Matt Read beat Hutton cleanly with a blast from the right circle but the shot hit the post and then pinballed off the goalie's back. Nearly every time this happens, the puck will end up going in the net. This time it went wide.
In the shootout, the Flyers inability to convert any of their first four chances while Mason stopped four in a row proved costly. Thereafter, it was Mason who was unable to slam the door when Schenn and Couturier gave the team two chances to come away with two points from the game if the goalie could make saves in the bottom half of the round.
Ultimately, it was hard to be too upset over the outcome. Of much greater concern right now is the way the Flyers have backslid defensively since December. This has been a teamwide issue and not just one of the defensemen and goaltenders.
On many nights, the Flyers have scored enough to compensate for mediocre defensive play and a stretch of average goaltending. In last night's game, Mason played well enough to deserve to win. Overall, though, the team's goaltending of late has been so-so.
Early this season, the Flyers were getting outstanding goaltending, decent (but not infallible) defense and zero offense. Now they are doing well offensively on most nights, but have been recently getting subpar team defense and average goaltending.
There are plenty of areas that need to be cleaned up as the club pushes toward the Olympic break. The Flyers will start a home-and-home set against the Islanders with a 7 p.m. game on Saturday at the Wells Fargo Center.
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