The Flyers went undefeated in the round robin portion of this year’s playoffs; advancing themselves to be seated as the 1 st place team in the Eastern Conference after beating “the best” their Conference had to offer. However, this victory did not come without a loss though. In the 4-1 victory over the Boston Bruins on Sunday August 2nd, 2020. Left-Wing Michael Raffl went awkwardly into the boards in the third period, and was apparently slew-footed from behind by Jeremy Lauzon of the Bruins. Raffl who was having an amazing game up to that point with a goal and assist had to be assisted off the ice by fellow teammate Scott Laughton and Flyers Athletic Trainer Jim McCrossin. Raffl needed the assistance of these men after such a dirty play left him unable to squstain any pressure on his foot.
After watching this video you can see what is most concerning on my opinion. NOT one of his teammates truly comes to Raffl’s aid, and makes Lauzon pay for his actions! Sure, Nate Thompson comes in as Raffl is still rolling around on the ice in pain and checks Lauzon, but the minute Lauzon shoves Thompson back and looks to ready himself for a bout Thompson just backs away awkwardly. I’m sorry but isn’t this why the Flyers traded for Nate Thompson at the deadline? I know times have changed but should they have? I can remember playing years ago in my Junior hockey days when one of my teammates took a dirty hit, me and a number of my teammates would automatically be in a race to see which one of us could get to that opposing player first, in order to be the lone one to lay hands on him. Then if you were not the first one there you said to hell with it and joined in any way! Upon being kicked out of the game and sent to our locker room, we would then divert to the oppositions team’s locker room instead and continue what we started on the ice. Ooooh, and I forgot to mention I was the goalie!
Moving on to this past Thursday’s game against the Washington Capitals. The Flyers again played incredibly, shutting down the great Alex Ovechkin yet again. Receiving phenomenal play from the teams second line center Kevin Hayes, and his wingers Scott Laughton, and Travis Konecny. This resulted in a Flyers 3-1 win over the Caps. What left me in amazement yet again though was the lack of protection from the Flyers for their star players. Washington’s Tom Wilson boarded Flyers star defenseman Ivan Provorov (something Wilson has been suspended for numerous times before and is being reviewed for potential suspension for now) in this game and nobody did anything about it. This hit was not accidental, Tom saw Ivan’s back facing towards him and Wilson never even thought to slow down in fact he charged at him taking multiple strides, before mashing Provorov into the boards face first.
This wasn’t the only thing in this game that happened that shouldn’t have Star Center Sean Couturier laid a huge open ice hit on Washington’s Garnet Hathaway only to have Hathaway palm the back of Couturier’s helmet and throw him face first into the ice. Not one Flyer on the ice even pursued that player to seek revenge. Now neither of these plays resulted in a Flyers player being injured but a third situation did. Flyers winger Jakub Voracek took a high stick/slash to the face which resulted in him having to leave the game and he wasn’t able to return. To go along with that Voracek did not dress for the Flyers following game Saturday against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Where the Flyers again cruised past their opposition winning
4-1 and suppressing Tampa Bay to be no more than a distance thunderstorm in the process.
Now I am not saying that the team needs to change what has been obviously working up to this point, and begin to play an undisciplined style of hockey (going full Hanson Brother’s SLAPSHOT) in future games. However, I do know that their lack of standing up for one another and settling for just getting up in a guy’s face after a dirty play and telling him “hey that was not very nice”, ISN’T GOING TO CUT IT!!! In a grueling 7 game series (which the Flyers look set to have a multitude of in the coming weeks ahead) opposing teams are going to get frustrated when they begin to go down in the series. With desperation setting in teams usually begin to play less and less disciplined. Which tends to result in injuries to whomever they are playing at the current time.
With the Flyers dominating in the Round Robin portion of this year’s playoffs you can bet that they have opened some eyes around the NHL, and have gained the respect they so deserve from the majority of teams left in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That is for what they’ve shown they can produce on the scoreboard, but if they don’t start to put an undying fear of retaliation into their adversaries when they do wrong you can expect to see the Flyers injury list start to multiply as the playoffs proceed.
I’ll take a power play over no retaliation every time. Grow up young man. We have a contender.
What good is a power play if our star players get injured and can’t play on it?
That’s why they put numbers on jerseys, file it away for next season
First, I enjoyed the article & for the most part I agree with what we witnessed & the mild response. I did notice in the Tampa Bay game the guys did respond to defend Hart when he was run at a few times. This is a younger team in a different time but I believe we will see them bonds strengthen! #Anytime Anywhere🏆
Thanks for the read. They did protect Hart as they should. But he wasn’t in a defenseless position either. Both Raffl and Provy were. That’s dirty hockey, and if Provy had been the one that got seriously hurt instead of Raffl people would be calling for the player that did its head, and that messed up. Utter shouldn’t be a different response for different players they are all one team.
This guy is clueless!! Number one into the playoffs and this is your complaint.
#1 seed yes, but that also cost us Raffl indefinitely and Voracek for a couple games. The lack of policing their opponent could have cost us Provy. Who’s next?
Whoever wrote this article is brain dead.If you stop to think about what your saying,you might ask yourself,what am I talking about.This core of Flyers are not the broad Street Bullies anymore,and retaliation usually cost your team the penalty.Come on man this core of Flyers is about skill and finesse,not fighting or retaliation.We do it with skill not dirty play
I wasn’t saying that we should go back to having fights every night just to fight. But when a player from another team does make a dirty play he should be punished for his actions or else they will only continue to intensify. If Provy had got seriously injured from that hit from Wilson Flyers fans would be rioting in the street, and calling for his head. But since it’s just Raffl I’m the crazy one.