Photo Credit: FNG’s Rob Windfelder
It’s a tough call when you come out and you’re holding your own against a team like Tampa. Are you actually hanging with them or are they just sizing you up?
The Flyers really seemed to be holding their own at the beginning of the first period. Play was moving quickly back and forth with neither team giving up dangerous chances. The Flyers looked sharp and up to speed. Wade Allison in particular came out totally spring-loaded at both ends of the ice.
Morgan Frost opened the scoring for the night. Owen Tippett made a suicide pass to Farabee. Tippett held onto the puck just long enough to take an impending hit as he threaded a pass to Farabee who made the feed to Frost. Frost beat Andrei Vasilevskiy with a sweet shot high to the blocker side. The puck stood up on him at the last second but Frost used that to his advantage.
Stuck in the D-zone
The Lightning really stepped things up after that. In addition the Flyers were having trouble clearing their zone the entire second half of the period. They would get the puck almost to the blue line and Tampa would find a way to keep it in and keep the pressure on. It’s like a 4th and 1 situation at the blue line sometimes. Just get it over the line and you got all five opposing players scrambling to get out of your zone to get onsides. Just make sure you get it over the line. The Flyers were having trouble getting that extra little push all night.
Penalty kill
Joel Farabee took an unnecessary penalty for tripping in the offensive zone. The Lightning’s Alex Killorn made them pay tying the score at one. Farabee took another penalty at the end of the period for retaliating after a questionably high hit. At that point Tampa was already swarming and it took everything the Flyers had to get out of the period tied at one.
The power-play carried over to the second period where Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov scored a power play goal to put his team up by one. Both teams were getting solid chances at both ends of the ice as things seemed to settle in for a bit. Carter Hart made a few big saves as Tampa again started to zone in. Eventually the Lightning scored their first even strength goal of the game. Ross Colton put one past Hart at 11:14 after prolonged pressure in the Flyers end. When Tampa has you down by two you gotta get the lid on or they’ll run away with it.
Carter Hart took a spill behind the Flyers net at absolutely the worst possible time. He lost his footing trying to trap a wrap around. Tampa pounced on the situation to put the score at 4-1 with half of the game still to play. It was Killorn’s second goal of the game.
Lemieux’s First
Brendan Lemieux tallied his first goal as a Flyer at 12:40 of the second period. York creeped in from the blue line and took the shot from pretty far out. You wouldn’t expect to test Vasilevskiy with a wrist shot from out there. Maybe Vasilevskiy didn’t expect it either. Lemieux caught just a piece of it as it flew past the Tampa netminder’s glove. The Flyers had some really good chances on a power-play at the end of the second yet found themselves going into the Third down by two goals.
Check out our Flyers Nitty Gritty Team Store!
During the course of the game the Flyers slowly erased Tampa’s huge shot advantage moreover many of their shots were high quality scoring chances as well. Time was running out for the Flyers but they kept gunning for the Tampa net. Clearing pucks out of the zone remained a problem for the Orange and Black throughout the night. Kucherov scored his second goal of the game at 17:38 of the 3rd putting this one out of reach. Tampa 5 – Philly 2
Ouch!
With only a few minutes left the Flyers had a couple really good chances in a row. After one stop players were all bunched up in front of the Lightning net when Tony DeAngelo reached through the crowd with his stick to spear an unsuspecting Tampa player right in the midsection, or possibly slightly lower. All five Tampa players piled on top of DeAngelo who earned himself a five minute major for his creative stick work.
The Flyers looked like they had the man advantage as they played shorthanded for the remainder of the game. They kept plugging away till the final horn. To sum things up the Flyers played a good game against a great team and they did not win.
Next game Thursday March 9th 7PM in Carolina against the Canes
