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Meltzer's Musings: The Good, Bad and Ugly as Flyers Drop Game 1 |
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The Philadelphia Flyers dropped the first game of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series with the New York Rangers, losing 4-1 at Madison Square Garden. Special teams failures and discipline lapses proved to be the Flyers' undoing, along with Philly's inability to get pucks behind the New York defense and set up a forecheck.
The game entered the third period tied at 1-1 before the Rangers scored three unanswered goals.
A first-period Andrew MacDonald goal that deflected off New York forward Martin St. Louis was created by Scott Hartnell forechecking Ryan McDonagh off the puck and sending him sprawling with a big hit behind the New York net. With traffic in front of Henrik Lundqvist, MacDonald's point shot re-directed high past the netminder.
Three minutes later, the Flyers paid the price for several failed opportunities to gather the puck and clear their defensive zone. Finally, Mats Zuccarello scored a rebound goal in close as he shook free and was left uncovered near the net.
The Rangers generally had the better of play in the second period but the Flyers had sporadic shifts where they generated good pressure. In what was Philadelphia's lone odd-man rush of the game, the Sean Couturier line was unable to pot a scoring chance off the rush. That was perhaps the toughest test that Henrik Lundqvist had to face all game.
New York had the game's only power play through two periods. The Flyers would have had one late in the second period but Brayden Schenn took a careless high-sticking penalty on the delayed call to cancel out the impending advantage.
With the score tied at 1-1 entering the third period, the Flyers finally got their first -- and only -- power play of the game, which they failed to convert. The score remained deadlocked until rookie forward Jason Akeson took an extremely careless high-sticking double minor as he followed through on a body check against New York's Carl Hagelin.
New York took a strangehold on the game by scoring on both halves of the penalty. First, Brad Richards buried a shot from the right side after a puck bounced to him off Flyers defenseman Kimmo Timonen. On the second half of the man advantage, Derek Stepan had time and space to bury a shot from a tight angle on the left side.
Now down by two goals, the Flyers took three additional stick-related infractions -- slashes by Claude Giroux and Zac Rinaldo and late-game crosscheck assessed to Brayden Schenn -- over the remainder of the game. In the meantime, New York's lead grew to three goals as Timonen hit the post in the New York end and the Rangers scored on a counterattack. Emery allowed a bad rebound on a Richards shot that went directly to an open Hagelin on the other side.
The Flyers got outshot 36-15 for the game and 13-1 in the final period. This was due both to all the late penalties they took and to their inability to generate any sustained attack during the earlier part of the third period. They will go back to the drawing board on Saturday -- tomorrow is a day off -- to make adjustments before Game 2 on Sunday.
Winning goaltender Lundqvist stopped 14 of 15 shots. Emery stopped 32 of 36 in a losing cause.
THE GOOD
1. The Flyers generated strong back pressure and good puck support for most of the game. Although they were getting outshot, most of New York's attempts were kept to the perimeter.
2. Emery played quite well in goal. He had help from the goal post once but was usually in the right position to make the saves. He had no realistic chance of stopping any of the first three New York goals. The last one was a rather ugly rebound, but the game was already over by that point and goal scorer Hagelin was wide open.
3. Sporadically, the Flyers generated a few shifts of sustained pressure. Top line wingers Scott Hartnell and Jakub Voracek were Philly's most dangerous forwards.
4. It is always a plus to get an offensive contribution from the defense. MacDonald's goal gave Philly the early lead and put them where they needed to be at the time.
THE BAD
1. Philly didn't get nearly enough pucks in deep. Fifteen shots is not nearly enough to win on most nights, and didn't help that Philly had 26 failed shot attempts (16 blocked by the Rangers, 11 that missed the net). Frankly, it didn't matter who was in goal for the Rangers tonight because the netminder was not tested at all. The game would still have been a 4-1 final if backup Cam Talbot had been in New York's net.
2. As goes Claude Giroux, so goes the Flyers. The Flyers' captain and main offensive catalyst was basically invisible in this game. The puck was rarely on his stick, and only attempted two shots on goal -- one got blocked and one missed the net as he sprawled to the ice. I'm not sure how much discomfort Giroux was in as the result of getting drilled on the play where MacDonald scored, but he needed to be much more of a tone-setter.
3. Wayne Simmonds, the Flyers "B" catalyst, was similarly shut down by the Rangers most of the net. When he is on his game, Simmonds creates a lot of havoc behind and in front of the goal. On this night, the Flyers couldn't get pucks to the areas where he sets up shop.
4. The Flyers spent too much time in their own end of the ice. New York's breakouts were much cleaner and smoother than Philly's. In the meantime, the Flyers' key shutdown forward, Sean Couturier, had a bit of a rough game on the defensive side of the puck in this tilt. Couturier was one of Philly's better forwards on the forecheck but the area where he's usually the team's most reliable forward -- defensive coverages and stick positioning -- had some lapses.
THE UGLY
1. Not only did the Flyers get only one power play in the game to six for New York, there really weren't many other sequences where the Flyers may have even deserved a power play. There was one play where Scott Hartnell got slashed, another where Giroux got interfered with in the defensive zone. That's about it. Overall, Philly didn't do enough of the sorts of things that create power play chances. New York simply won too many of the battles around the puck and the Flyers didn't have their feet moving consistently enough to draw penalties.
2. The Flyers were a very good penalty killing team for most of the season, but the PK really let them down in the third period. The Rangers get set up a little too easily and the Flyers were too passive in challenging the lanes. The power play after New York scored on both halves of the Akeson double minor wasn't so much killed by Philly as survived. The Flyers need to be a lot better than that on special teams if they are to win this series.
3. Five stick infractions in the course of a game -- and four in one period -- are way too many. It's a cop out to blame referee Dave Jackson. Blame the Flyers for their lapses in discipline. The Brayden Schenn and Akeson penalties were the type that hurt a team, and the Flyers paid dearly for the latter.
4. Other than Giroux (9-for-14), the Flyers fared very poorly in the faceoff circle in this game. Philly was a superior faceoff club to New York during the regular season, so this is another area the Flyers will need to bear down upon and execute better in Game 2.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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