WRAP: SHARKS DOWN FLYERS, 3-1

The Philadelphia Flyers are now winless in their last nine games (0-4-5) as they fell, 3-1, to the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center. They finished their November schedule with a dreadful 2-5-6 record and fell to 4-5-4 on home ice and 8-10-7 overall.

Monday's game, if taken solely on its own account, was going to be a gut check game even if the Flyers had come into it on a winning streak. They were playing for the fifth time in eight nights against a rested Sharks team; a club that frequently presents matchup problems for Philly and has been a good road team. It was going to take a dig-deep performance across the board -- nearly penalty-free and probably backboned by a stellar game in goal by Michal Neuvirth -- to win the game even under ideal conditions.

The current conditions, of course, are the opposite of ideal. The Flyers are a mentally frazzled team with confidence at a low ebb even when they play with a lead or in overtime. There was a high risk that Tuesday's game was going to get ugly. It did.

“It’s a back-to-back. It’s no excuse but I think that might be a reason probably why we didn’t have the legs in the third but still shouldn’t be an excuse. We had one shot on net until we got on the six on five push in that period. So it’s unacceptable. We have to play with some more pride. Some more passion. We have to force the issue," Wayne Simmonds said.

“It’s not this one. It’s all nine. It’s a cumulative thing. We have had leads. We have had chances to win in overtime. Shootouts whatever it may be and we haven’t done it. I know it’s unacceptable. This isn’t right.”

The Flyers, despite an early lead provided by Claude Giroux's 11th goal of the season, got outplayed for much of the game and displayed virtually zero push-back or energy in the third period in particular. They turned pucks over throughout the night both under pressure (nine credited takeaways for San Jose) or through their own poor execution (a whopping 16 charged giveaways, at least seven of which were in potential high-danger areas). They took several bad penalties, including a Jakub Voracek tripping penalty that negated one of the Flyers' two power plays just nine seconds into it.

"Maybe when you’re tired. you make some poor decisions. We didn’t take care of the puck, we made some bad decisions tonight. We didn’t generate any offense. You know what, I don’t really have answers for you. We need to find a way, we have got to look at each other and see what we’re playing for here and go play for it," Giroux said.

Neuvirth (31 saves on 34 shots) had an uneven night in goal in a game where he had to be stellar. He did not track the puck particularly well and probably would have liked to have had back two of the San Jose goals -- if not all three.

Chris Tierny (6th goal of the season), Joe Thornton (5-on-3 power play goal, 4th), and Marc-Edouard Vlasic (2nd) scored for the Sharks. Logan Couture notched his seventh and eighth assists of the season, while Brent Burns (10th), Joe Pavelski (8th), Brenden Dillon (5th) and Justin Braun (9th) had one helper apiece. Starting goalie Aaron Dell was not tested often but came up with 22 saves on 23 shots to earn the win in the absence of Martin Jones, who was held out for precautionary reasons.

The Flyers went 0-for-2 on the power play and 4-for-5 on the penalty kill; as noted above, one of the power plays and a corresponding penalty kill were just nine seconds in duration so it was practically an 0-for-1/ 3-for-4 night on special teams night. There was 3:51 worth of 4-on-4 play in the game between offsetting first period penalties (Shayne Gostisbehere for roughing and Tomas Hertl for slashing) and Voracek for an accidental trip while lunging to try to keep the puck in the offensive zone on the Flyers' abbreviated first power play.

In the third period, the Flyers had a miserable time trying to get the puck over center ice. They were held to one harmless shot for most of the period before finishing with five. San Jose got pucks in deep, cycled at will and generally locked down the game with confidence.

How ugly did it get for the Flyers? Fans were chanting "Fire Hakstol" during the game. Afterwards, the Flyers' players held a closed door meeting.

“They can chant whatever they want. We’re in this together, we’re all in the same boat here. It’s not on him, it’s on everybody," Giroux said.

The lone highlight for the Flyers came at the 48-second mark of the game. From a tight angle just ahead of the goal line a few feet from the left post, Giroux took a tape-to-tape feed from Voracek and deftly chipped it home for a 1-0 lead. Voracek got his 23rd assist of the season on the play. Andrew MacDonald got his first assist of the season.

The lead held until 10:29 of the first period. On what seemed initially to be a routine rush, Tierny skated into the right circle and, from above the dot and using defenseman Travis Sanheim as a partial screen, fired the puck past Neuvirth. Replays showed that the puck went in straight and was not re-directed off Sanheim's stick. Burns and Dillon received the assists.

With Simmonds (slashing) and Michael Raffl (delay of game for flipping the puck over the glass from the defensive zone) in the penalty box and San Jose skating 5-on-3, Thornton scored from a very flat angle as Neuvirth failed to seal off the post. The assists went to Couture and Pavelski at the 18:42 mark.

"Definitely have to stop that one. It was a long shift and end of the period. Heavy legs but have to make the save there for sure," Neuvirth said.

The second period saw the Flyers get outshot by a 17-10 margin. The real death knell for the Flyers' hopes in this game game on a Vlasic point shot (initally unscreened but Braun moved in front on a deflection attempt) that found the net at 16:04. Couture and Pavelski got the assists.

Philadelphia went down rather meekly in the third period, never getting organized to any appreciable degree. There was a lot of individual frustration for and some one-and-done forays that didn't result in shots until the very late stages but the Sharks were in total control.

Flyers rookie defenseman Robert Hägg was credited with a season-high nine hits. The Flyers overall were credited with 34 hits to 12 by San Jose. This was largely because the Sharks had the puck most of the time as the game progressed. The Flyers went 31-for-57 (54 percent) on faceoffs but whatever initial possession they may have had was often negated by turnovers.

"This is pretty tough, I mean, tonight was one of those ones where nothing was going right. We couldn’t generate anything. Sloppy play. Certainly not a game we are proud of. Tough one to put our name on. We have a few days off here to clear our minds and get ready to go for the next one," Andrew MacDonald said.

"It just seemed like we really couldn’t get anything going at all. We were trying to force pucks. We were making good reads but just kind of poor decisions all over the ice, reflected on how we played. Chances we gave up, certainly said that is something we are going to address. We have a few days here then move forward.
,
?Throughout this stretch of games we have played and come out on the short side of things. The last couple, we haven’t been able to put together a full 60 min games and tonight was probably our worst one. I think throughout it and we just couldn’t generate anything. In saying that, there are some bad bounces and untimely times and we took penalties at bad times. Swings of momentum at really bad times during the game. We just have to push through this. We are a close team here. We just have to find a way to get things done. "

The Flyers will take a pre-scheduled complete off-day on Wednesday after the back-to-back, five-in-eight stretch of games. They will return to practice on Thursday at the Skate Zone in Voorhees. On Saturday afternoon, the Flyers host the Boston Bruins at the Wells Fargo Center.

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HEXTALL TRANSCRIPT

Flyers general manager Ron Hextall spoke to the media following the game about the state of the team. Below is a full transcript, courtesy of the Flyers:

Do you feel caught between a rock and a hard place with how things have gone recently? To do something big could be an overreaction.

Great question. If you look at the way we’ve played from the start of the year, I’m pretty good with the way our team has played. Pretty good with the way our team has played the last nine games. I think tonight we ran out of energy. Obviously results lately are not very good. We deserve better, but we haven’t gotten better. Obviously we gotta find a way.

Ron you’ve been in this city a long time. Do you know how that sounds to fans when you’ve lost nine in a row and you’re saying you’ve played well?

Have you seen our games?

I have.

How do you think we’ve played?

Not well enough to win all of them.

Not all of them. If we were playing poorly, I would be the first to say we were playing poorly. We are not playing poorly. To look objectively at our team right now, and say, ‘Are we playing poorly?’ No. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot at times? Yes we are. Critical mistakes at critical times? Yes. It’s kind of what happens when the snow ball starts to go the wrong way and you start doing things that are unpredictable.

If you took the score away from the last nine games I’ve seen and told me we’re 0-9, I’d be like ‘come on.’ The point is we have to find ways to win. Nobody is looking for excuses around here. We are gonna battle though this. If we thought we were a really poor team, that’s totally different. Losing nine games in a row is unacceptable. Let’s be real. It’s not acceptable for many franchises and certainly not ours.

In saying that, as a manager, I've got be realistic with how our team’s playing. Let’s say the last nine games we were .500, 5-4, somewhere in there. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. It’s what we deserve. Now again, we shot ourselves in the foot. But as a whole we’ve certainly played better than our record.

Does rectifying that fall on the players? Or is that something that you or the coaches have to get involved with to try and find a way?

That falls on all of us. We’re all in this together. Nobody’s jumping off any ships here. We’re in it together. Right now it’s hard to find a positive. I think one of the impressive things is this group hasn’t started pointing fingers at each other. That’s a sign of strong character. It’s a sign that we’re going to come out of this.

The mistakes, everybody in the world can see them, you can see them, the fans have seen them, but often is a least interpreted as loss of confidence and grinding on yourself because you’re not getting the results, are you worried about that part of at all?

Well, that’s what happens when you go all of the sudden start five, six, seven, eight games in a row without a win, you start to get frustrated. I think the frustration started showing there in the third period for us, but for the most part we’ve done a pretty good job of trying to move on from one game on to the next.

It’s not easy. You’ve been in a locker room when you’ve lost seven, eight, nine games in a row, and it’s ugly, right? But this group I give them credit they’ve stuck together, they’ve battled through it, if we weren’t battling right now we’d have a problem.

Do head coaches react differently in times like this?

In terms of what?

In terms of the way they act during a losing streak, in terms of how they deal with their players, in terms of any kinds of moves they may or may not make.

Of course, I mean every coach is different, every coach is his own man so of course they react differently.

The fans -- you hear it as much as I do -- you need physicality or some perception [of it]. Sam Morin is down and came up very briefly and is down again. What don’t you see in him that could help this team at least in terms of physicality?

Wel,l when I looked the other night we had a 20-, a 21-, two 22-, and a 24-year-old defenseman. That’s five of our six. That might be the youngest defense I’ve ever seen. And to say right now we need to get younger on defense, I'm not sure that’s a solution.

I think we missed AMac, he’s an older guy, he’s a glue guy, he’s a guy that makes the younger guys feel better. Radko Gudas is the same, the veteran presence.

I can’t explain it to you guys, but it makes a huge difference, so just to patch six kids in there and say "Go get 'em, guys," you’re looking for a disaster. You’re not helping those kids.

Last season you thought the team was good enough to make the playoffs. Do you still feel that way or does this make you reassess what type of team you have?

No, I still believe we’re a playoff team.

What needs to be done to make that happen?

We need to be better at some critical moments, but part of it is we need to continue to do what we’re doing. We’re doing a lot of good things. Again, tonight I don’t think was our best game. We’re feeling some fatigue. Probably a little bit of frustration. We gotta stick with it. We gotta stick together. We gotta win Saturday. That’s our focus right now. We gotta win Saturday.

You’ve been in closed door meetings before. Is this just a chance to sort of air that frustration? Sort of control the finger pointing before it gets started.

Was there a closed door meeting?

Yeah.

I didn’t know. I’ve been in a lot. I don’t know what was said. I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but I don’t know what was said. Closed door meetings are closed door meetings. Those are a good thing. Team being together, shut the door, let’s talk this out. Any grievances, air them. But I’m guessing it was probably a stick together meeting because these guys have done a good job sticking together.

Going back to the Calgary game, there’s been a lot of penalties. Shayne took it upon himself that particular game, but when you negate power plays like that with penalties, how do you clean that aspect up?

We gotta play a little bit smarter there. I think in the last eight games, we’ve given up seven more penalties then we’ve [drawn]. It doesn’t sound like much, but two minutes a game is quite a bit. Especially the way our special teams haven’t exactly been right on the last eight games. That’s a big difference. Those are the types of things we gotta clean up.

You say nine is unacceptable. Regardless of how close they are, is there a point where you say we gotta do something? Even if they are some overtime losses.

I try to make this team better every day. There’s something that can be done. That doesn’t change throughout the year.

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