Bill Meltzer: Wrapup: Flyers Fall 5-4 to Penguins

Scoring lots of goals, giving more up. Not a recipe for winning.

Sweet penalty shot by Jake, nonchalant and confident. Flower is still looking for his jock.

Glad G finally got one. Great play by Gudas, amazing stuff.

The D needs to be a bit stingier.

Tough loss..

If you ever want to see the game of hockey these two teams would be a good showcase..The best player in the world, Malkin, Giroux, Voracek, young players, suspect goaltending and iffy defense..

We are reverse Devils

The good news is the offense is just demolishing, even with a crappy bottom 6 that is not being assembled to the best it could be, with VDV as 4LW and PEB as 3C. The top 6 has just been that good.

The goalie situation just can't keep up like this. On its own, it will adjust to normal. But the defense is allowing a metric ton of high danger chances against. That needs to change. It's not even forward defense. The defenders have been awful in suppressing chances. MDZ will help out a lot with that. Hopefully it's MDZ-Ghost, Provy-Gudas.

What is there to say?

The Flyers are still a team in transition. With all their pieces in place and healthy, playing well, they're still likely a 3rd in division/wildcard team. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case yet. They haven't been healthy and they haven't played very well.

The 55 seconds from Hell seemed like a perfect dichotomy of the season thus far. Rather innocuous rush for the Pens, Crosby fires a really good shot from a bad angle, Mason goes down into the RVH, and seemed to be leaning and the puck picks a corner. Great shot, but stoppable, as Bill noted.

Then an immediate PP, Crosby finds a spot in the slot, despite the Flyers playing a tight box and gets a great open look that beats Mason. Lead gone, Pens feeling it. Finally Mason gets caught behind, can't recover and Cullen gives Pittsburgh the lead.

Minor mistakes, snowball into real trouble and basically ended up blowing their toes off. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Strangely, it's like a 180 from last year. Last year they couldn't score and when they blew a coverage or faltered in transition, the goaltending was great and mitigated the damage more often than not. This season, the offense has been great, but the goaltending has been unable to stop the bleeding when there have been mistakes.

I am wondering, just idle speculation, that if the goaltending hasn't come around by say, US Thanksgiving, if the Flyers try to cut bait and maybe swing a deal with a team that faces losing a guy for nothing in expansion. Obviously, if Mason and or Neuvirth get in a groove and get back to their past level of play there likely won't be a deal, but if they are struggling a month from now?

The good thing is, toss out that 55 second stretch tonight, and the Flyers pretty much had their way with the Penguins. They outshot them and controlled play. They generated tons of chances. But the mistakes they made ended up in their net. That has to stop.

What is there to say?

The Flyers are still a team in transition. With all their pieces in place and healthy, playing well, they're still likely a 3rd in division/wildcard team. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case yet. They haven't been healthy and they haven't played very well.

The 55 seconds from Hell seemed like a perfect dichotomy of the season thus far. Rather innocuous rush for the Pens, Crosby fires a really good shot from a bad angle, Mason goes down into the RVH, and seemed to be leaning and the puck picks a corner. Great shot, but stoppable, as Bill noted.

Then an immediate PP, Crosby finds a spot in the slot, despite the Flyers playing a tight box and gets a great open look that beats Mason. Lead gone, Pens feeling it. Finally Mason gets caught behind, can't recover and Cullen gives Pittsburgh the lead.

Minor mistakes, snowball into real trouble and basically ended up blowing their toes off. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Strangely, it's like a 180 from last year. Last year they couldn't score and when they blew a coverage or faltered in transition, the goaltending was great and mitigated the damage more often than not. This season, the offense has been great, but the goaltending has been unable to stop the bleeding when there have been mistakes.

I am wondering, just idle speculation, that if the goaltending hasn't come around by say, US Thanksgiving, if the Flyers try to cut bait and maybe swing a deal with a team that faces losing a guy for nothing in expansion. Obviously, if Mason and or Neuvirth get in a groove and get back to their past level of play there likely won't be a deal, but if they are struggling a month from now?

The good thing is, toss out that 55 second stretch tonight, and the Flyers pretty much had their way with the Penguins. They outshot them and controlled play. They generated tons of chances. But the mistakes they made ended up in their net. That has to stop.
- Jsaquella

i wonder what value streit will have
they'll definitely have to move him if they can't get it together

Getting MDZ and Raffl back will certainly help, but it really comes down to doing a better job of staying focused for 60 minutes. But all of that aside, they must start getting better goaltending or none of the above will matter

Bad gap control. Teams like the Penguins only need one breakdown to make you pay.

Add the barely mediocre play from both goalies and here we are.