The Philadelphia Flyers did not generate much sustained attack for two periods and
fell to the Florida Panthers, 2-1, at the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday night. Philadelphia's six-game point streak came to an end, while the Panthers extended their winning streak to five games.
Second period goals by Aaron Ekblad (power play, 1st) and Evgenii Dadonov (8th) built a 2-0 lead for Florida. Mike Hoffman (secondary assist on the Ekblad goal) tied a franchise record with a 13-game point streak. Dadonov's point streak is now at 12 games. Aleksander Barkov earned his 9th assist of the season on the Dadonov goal while Frank Vatrano collected his first assist on the Ekblad goal.
Roberto Luongo was not really tested much for two periods, but had to made multiple tough saves during a heavy Flyers push in the third period including a shot through layers of traffic and a scramble around the net shortly before the final buzzer. He finished with 29 saves on 30 shots. In the third period, Luongo made 15 saves.
"The first period was just a tight period, both ways, there just wasn’t much time, space, there weren’t many opportunities either way. There was probably maybe 3 or 4 opportunities each way and that was a tight period. The second period was….our first 2, 3 shifts of the period didn’t have enough purpose, we ended up taking the first penalty I don’t know, 3 minutes and some in and we spent most of the next 10 minutes killing, so that killed our second period and put us in a little bit of a hole and that leads us to the third," Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said.
At the other end of the ice, Brian Elliott stopped 28 of 30 shots in a losing cause. His best stop was a point-blank robbery of Hoffman to keep the game scoreless early in the second period. A
clutch save on Barkov early in the third period paid particular dividends shortly thereafter as the Flyers soon scored to draw within 2-1.
The Flyers' lone goal came from Jakub Voracek (5th), buried upstairs on the rush off a great feed from Oskar Lindblom(6th assist; points in six of his last seven games). Sean Couturier got the secondary assist (5th) on the play. The Nolan Patrick line generated the heaviest pressure as the Flyers made their comeback bid in the third period but the Flyers could not find an equalizer.
Voracek had a great one-on-one chance on Luongo immediately after play resumed following his goal. Later, Travis Sanheim moved up on a play and started a near tic-tac-toe sequence with a perfect pass to Lindblom. In turn, Lindblom put the puck on Voracek's tape as he sped down the right slot. All that was missing was beating Luongo. Subsequently, after a good defensive play by Christian Folin, Patrick made an excellent pass to Lindblom, whose left slot shot beat Luongo but hit the post and stayed out.
Back in the first period, the Flyers controlled play for the first 8:04, generating five of the game's first six shots and supporting the puck well. Florida took over in the latter minutes of the period, buoyed by a strong kill on the Flyers' first (and only) power play of the game. The Panthers made a late push and ended up with a 14-6 shot edge.
"I feel like when we had that power play we couldn’t get anything going. They put some good pressure on us. They play a different game than other teams we’ve been playing but that’s not an excuse, we gotta be ready to battle 60 minutes not just 20," Claude Giroux said.
The second period was the Flyers' weakest. Florida came right out attacking and pinning the Flyers in deep. Over the 20 minutes, the Panthers won most of the battles for pucks and closed off the lanes in the defensive zone when Philly did have looks.
Officially, for the game, the Flyers attempted 72 shots (30 on net, 20 blocked by Florida, 22 that missed the net) while Florida attempted 52 (30 on net, 15 blocked, seven misses).
The Flyers also found themselves having to kill three penalties in the period, once with Couturier (hooking Barkov) and twice with Provorov (a hard-luck tripping penalty on Nick Bjugstad and a later one to prevent a Mike Hoffman breakaway after the defenseman pinched up and got a tough pass from Travis Konecny after some hesitation from Konecny).
The Flyers killed the first penalty in good shape. On the second one, Ekblad pinched down low and backhanded a Vatrano rebound off Elliott's blocker and into the net for a 1-0 lead at 8:15 of the second period. The second Provorov tripping penalty was killed off successfully.
The Panthers made it 2-0 at 17:35 of the second period. Giroux tried to make a centering pass from behind the net into the slot but there was nothing but white jerseys nearby. After Barkov gained the puck, he passed ahead to Dadonov, who went one-on-one with Folin.
From the top of the right circle, Dadonov fired a 35-foot shot through Folin's legs as a partial screen. Elliott didn't pick it up in time and was beaten glove-side.
"He shot it right through [Folin's] legs. Those are tough to pick up. It was a good shot," Elliott said.
Replays of the goal showed that Folin could have played the gap and used his stick better but it was also not impossible save from that distance. Otherwise, Elliott (who had saved 73 shots in a row before the Ekblad rebound bank shot) was very strong in net again.
Down by one goal in the final six minutes of the third period, Hakstol gave a shift to Nicolas Aube-Kubel (6:41 of total ice time over eight shifts). The rookie had nearly scored in the first period and was in the middle of another scoring chance (that was blocked) in the second period.
Hakstol said after the game that he was looking for energy and heaviness on the puck, which Aube-Kubel had brought despite his typically sparing ice time. The second-lowest ice time was that of Jori Lehterä (7:19 over nine shifts, including 2:41 on the PK).
The Flyers won 68 percent of the faceoffs in Tuesday's game, led by Nolan Patrick's 10-for-13 and Jordan Weal's 9-for-11.
On Wednesday, the Flyers (9-8-1) will practice at the Skate Zone in Voorhees. On Thursday, the New Jersey Devils (7-8-1) will come to the Wells Fargo Center. The Flyers are now 2-1-0 on their five-game homestand.
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