The Flyers' 4-2 loss to the New York Rangers looked like too many games that Philly has played against the Blueshirts in recent years. It was a winnable game that got away.
After being carved up twice by the Flyers' power play in the first period, New York stayed out of the box the rest of the game, and won based on superior five-on-five play. The Rangers limited the open space that the Flyers had available, keeping the Flyers to just 14 shots in the second and third periods.
New York was also the more opportunistic team in transition. The Flyers got caught in bad pinches and bad line changes, and eventually got burned several times.
Apart from his tremendous pass to Wayne Simmonds on the Flyers' first goal, Claude Giroux was rendered a total non-factor tonight. Jakub Voracek also displayed some surgical passing on the first goal and made a nice play to follow up his own rebound on the second goal. He was quiet as the game rolled on. The Flyers could have used another line to step up, especially at five-on-five, but it just wasn't there. They occasionally generated some forechecking pressure but few chances resulted.
Finally, on a night where the Flyers really needed Ilya Bryzgalov to come up with his A game -- he had to at least offset Henrik Lundqvist -- they instead got a very average performance. He looked bad on three New York goals (Ryan Callahan's second goal of the first period and both Rick Nash goals) that were not easy saves but which were also potentially makeable saves.
At the other end of the ice, defending Vezina winner Lundqvist may not have had a lot of saves to make, but he had to come up big several times. Let's put it this way: If the Scott Hartnell chance in the second period with the score tied 2-2 had gone the other way, we might have seen an entirely different outcome. He also made big stops late in the game when the Flyers had Bryzgalov pulled.
The Flyers suffered a potentially costly injury tonight, as Nicklas Grossmann went down with a lower body injury. Tim Panaccio of CSN Philly and HockeyBuzz got word that it's a hip flexor injury (which can be anything from day-to-day to week-to-week depending on severity) but Howard Eskin reported it was a groin pull. Grossmann finished the first period before leaving the game.
New York defenseman Marc Staal took a puck to the eye on a deflected shot by Voracek. Hopefully he will be OK. It was a frightening injury.
The Flyers, who have again fallen a game below .500, have no time to lament their fortunes tonight. They'll go at it again on Thursday against the Penguins and Saturday against the Bruins.
**********
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:
»