Date Published: 11-27-2022
Photo Credit: NHL.com
With so many of the Flyers top forwards out of the line-up due to injury it’s not just the players who have been brought up from the Phantoms who are being asked to play over their heads. If your whole first line is not available then your second line is now matched up against the other team’s top line all night long. Your third line is against their second and so on. It’s not just the guys who were brought up from the farm team that are in uncharted territory. With so many of the Flyers top forwards not available almost everyone is expected to play against a higher level of opposition then they normally would be. If one or two key guys were missing you could say the team is making excuses, but that’s not what we have here.
Tonight the Flyers lost by a score of 5-2 against a red hot New York Islanders team. The Flyers started the game a bit disjointed, they looked out of synch and kept tripping over the blue line trying to enter the zone onsides. The Islanders scored an early goal but the Flyers tied it up on a beauty from Lukas Sedlak who was set up with a perfect pass from Kevin Hayes. The Flyers headed into the second tied at one. About halfway through the period Sedlak set up Joel Farabee to give the Flyers a 2-1 lead. With only a few minutes left in a solid 2nd period it looked like the Flyers might be riding that lead into the 3rd when out of nowhere things just totally broke down. The breakdown only lasted a few seconds but in professional ice hockey that’s all it takes. Sometimes all the Flyers hard work and discipline just flies out the window for a matter of seconds and they end up paying the price like they did tonight. They snapped right back to life after the goal and pressed hard till the horn but the damage was done. Their lead was gone and after a strong period of hockey they were headed into the third rd starting from scratch again with the score tied at two.
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The third period started with a really nice attempt by Nicolas Deslauriers. He faked rapping around behind the net with the puck and at the last second snuck out front instead and almost tucked it away. Deslauriers has much better hands than he gets credit for. He makes some plays in drills during practice that get the rest of the team whooping it up in approval. He has his role on the team banging bodies around and using his hands to settle scores with opposing players, he really excels in those areas. It would be nice to see him take a few more chances offensively with the puck, he does have skills and it would totally add an element of surprise to his game.
The 3rd period quickly melted down into a total collapse. The Islanders scored two goals in a matter of 22 seconds and then capped it off with their 5th goal of the night. The game devolved into numerous scrums and a couple flat out fights. (Good solid old school, sticking up for each other, toe-to-toe fights, not just dancing and dodging for the heck of it). The frustration level was there and it was time to leave some calling cards leading up to the next match between these two teams this coming Tuesday night. After the game Head Coach John Tortorella said he refused to criticize his team tonight. To be honest Torts is between a rock and a hard place right now. No amount of criticism or yelling or whatever else is going to change the fact that his team is probably going to be out-matched every night until they start getting some of their key forwards back. If these are the guys holding down the fort, and they are doing the best that they can, what sense does it make at this point in time to compound the problem by breaking their spirit?
What you are seeing on the ice now is a continuing pattern of failed drafts over the past 5+ years.
Many of those ‘call-ups’ from the Phantoms look either lost on the ice, or just aren’t talented enough to carry a team when the injury bug strikes.
That team on the other side of the Conmonwealth never has that problem. They know how to draft , and how to develop talent. Hate them all you want, but they know what they’re doing. The only weak link I see thus far from them is their GM…who can set a team back decades with one bad or ‘non’ move.