The Flyers were coming off such a strong and disciplined win against the mighty Winnipeg Jets on Saturday night that expectations may have been a little high for this game. Samuel Ersson has been playing some great hockey as of late so after Ivan Fedotov’s brilliant performance against the Jets Ersson got the start tonight against the Calgary Flames.
Former Flyers Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost were playing in Philly for the first time in Calgary uniforms so lots of niceties were being exchanged before and early into the game. At one of the first stoppages of play the organization had a tribute reel prepared to run. Flyers Fans gave the boys a nice round of applause. Then everything went sour.
Philly vs Calgary
This game started out with both teams looking a bit unorganized and then the focus quickly shifted to the Flyers. Three unanswered Flames goals in the span of less than two minutes basically ended this game midway into the 1st period.
7:40 Connor Zary deflected a Brayden Pachal shot past Ersson 1-0 Flames.
8:13 Nazem Kadri walked right in past a number of Flyers and fired a wrist shot short side 2-0 Flames.
9:32 Connor Zary again, this time with a wrist shot from the side of the net 3-0 Flames.
Less than halfway through the opening period Samuel Ersson was pulled from the Flyers net and Ivan Fedotov was brought in to try and salvage the game. The thing is Calgary did not look all that impressive taking the early commanding lead. The Flyers just seemed to be disorganized and Ersson did not seem focused. Something had to be done to stop the bleeding so a goaltending change was in order.
The change of goalies showed early signs of changing the tone. Twenty-two seconds after the Flames 3rd goal Tyson Foerster was skating the puck into the Calgary zone. Foerster was tripped from behind. As he was going down he was careful to guide the puck towards Noah Cates who gripped it and ripped it past Flames goaltender Dustin Wolf, 3-1 Flames.
Ivan Fedotov seemed to have calmed things down in the Flyers net. A fantastic individual effort by former Calgary Flame Andrei Kuzmenko brought the Flyers to within one goal with just 2:49 left in the 1st period. (yes we’re still in the 1st). Kuzmenko stole the puck from Nazem Kadri at center ice and made his way towards the Calgary net. Kuzmenko used the defense to the detriment of their netminder and fired the puck past Wolf low to the glove side, 3-2 Flames.
Things were looking up for the Flyers for the next 18 seconds. That’s all it took before Yegor Sharangovich beat Fedotov through the five-hole to send this game into the 1st intermission with the Flames ahead of the Flyers 4-2.
Downhill from there
The rest of the game was a slow motion train wreck. The Flyers were tentative and soft handed. There was a ton of giveaways and disconnects. Calgary was not very dynamic either. For a nine goal game it was pretty low energy.
After a six goal 1st period the only goal of the second was scored by MacKenzie Weegar. Weegar beat Fedotov, who had lost his stick, with a shot low stick side 16:33 into the period. Morgan Frost picked up his second assist of the night on the goal.
Sean Couturier made the score 5-3 by pushing a Matvei Michkov shot over the goal line 10:43 into the 3rd period. Kuzmenko picked up the secondary assist.
The Flyers pulled Fedotov for the extra attacker and Matt Coronato fired the puck into the empty net with 1:01 left in the game to achieve the final score of 6-3.
Next up: Flyers Jets rematch in Philly Thursday night at 7:00 PM.
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