On March 14, the Philadelphia Flyers followed up their worst loss of the season, a 7-0 defeat versus the Tampa Bay Lightning, with another blowout less than a week later. A 6-2 loss on the Flyers’ home ice, it was a less-than-ideal start to their seven-game gauntlet where they face the top third of the NHL in every single one. But what were some takeaways from this one?
Flyers Will Have to Rely on Luck Against Explosive Teams
At this point, it’s all but cemented — the Flyers cannot beat teams that are explosive on the offensive side of the puck with any regularity. It’s their kryptonite. In order to do so at all, they will need luck on their side. And, unfortunately in this one, they were on the wrong side of it. Toronto got essentially every bounce early on, leaving the Flyers in the dust. The Flyers don’t have the skill to make up for that.
It’s not great for a team that has aspirations to make the playoffs to have to rely on luck to win against teams that can score goals, but that’s the Flyers’ situation. In order to score, they need bounces to go their way. They’ll need elite goaltending. And they can’t slip up and allow a player on pace for 70 goals to get a chance without a defender within his solar system. But none of that happened against the Maple Leafs. Simply, the Flyers are not good enough to compete with a team like them under normal circumstances — their eight-game losing streak against Toronto is evidence of that.
The Flyers aren’t bad against all good teams, though. They are 2-0-0 against the NHL’s top dogs in the Florida Panthers — a defense-first team. Their struggles solely apply to clubs well beyond their skill range and those that actually use their skill to their advantage. It shows that, even though the Flyers are in a playoff spot, their rebuild is still a huge work in progress.
Flyers’ Power Play Finally Finding Its Way
In some good news, the Flyers’ power play has been solid in its last two games. Their man advantage scored a goal against the San Jose Sharks in their last game, and they made it two contests in a row with power-play tallies. In the Flyers’ last two campaigns, they’ve had the worst power play in the NHL. In this one, they’ve been toward the bottom of the league for the entire season. But things have really started to change recently. They look far more dangerous when up a man, and that should be big for their confidence moving forward.
Related: Solving the Flyers’ Struggling Power Play
In particular, forwards Morgan Frost and Owen Tippett have looked solid. They hooked up on a goal in this one with the former finishing it. While the Flyers may lack talent, it’s not enough to have an anemic power play. Considering teams like the Arizona Coyotes and New York Islanders that don’t have a lot of high-end talent have one of the better man advantages in the entire NHL, that’s probably not the biggest underlying reason. And that has been shown recently.
The power play is almost all strategy, and the Flyers’ strategy (and creativity) has been way off. Having stars would help, but having a dull man advantage is impossible to come back from for a team like Philadelphia. But that dullness has faded. The Flyers have actually generated some great looks. That might not last as time goes on, but the potential of having a good power play was shown. And that’s great news.
The Defense Has to Be Better
While the Flyers have three key defenders on injured reserve and they recently traded Sean Walker, there was no excuse for the defense to be as bad as it was. Nobody was good on the back end whatsoever, and there were some pretty egregious mistakes made. In the first period, goaltender Sam Ersson was pulled for allowing three goals on 12 shots. The catch? The Maple Leafs had 2.23 expected goals on those shots — he really wasn’t even pull-worthy, the Flyers were just awful on defense.
Ersson is a good enough goaltender to keep the Flyers in games when they don’t deserve to be, but neither he nor backup Felix Sandstrom, who was playing really well until some more defensive breakdowns, had any help at all. They can’t do it all by themselves, and the consequence of that was shown in this one.
Even when defensemen such as Rasmus Ristolainen, Nick Seeler, and Jamie Drysdale come back, there’s no guarantee that the team will play any better. When those players were in the lineup, the Flyers were still struggling defensively against the Maple Leafs in their 4-3 overtime loss in February. They’ll have to find something in themselves to turn the tides because it was an ugly effort all around.
Getting back to the Flyers’ tough schedule, next up they’ll go on the road to face the Boston Bruins on March 16. Philadelphia lost to Boston 6-2 right before the All-Star Break, so their odds of winning aren’t looking all that great. It’s not a must-win game considering both the Detroit Red Wings and Islanders — teams chasing the Flyers in their pursuit of the playoffs — both lost in regulation, but it would be a huge one to mark in the win column. The Flyers, sitting at 76 points in 67 games, need every point they can get. It would be nice to beat a team they have a storied rivalry with to make that happen.
