Flyers making strides defensively even as they remain inconsistent elsewhere
PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Flyers had already faced the Carolina Hurricanes twice this season entering Tuesday night’s clash at Wells Fargo Center, so they were well aware it wasn’t going to be easy to generate scoring chances. That Carolina allows the fewest shots in the league is just the on-paper proof of what they already know to be true.
“They play a hard man-to-man (defense),” Scott Laughton said after what was a 4-1 Flyers loss. “It’s hard to get away from them.”
Goals have been hard to come by for the Flyers lately, with just four in their last four games. Travis Konecny ’s breakaway score at 7:14 of the second period Tuesday ended a drought of more than 114 minutes, but also started a new one, as it was the only puck they would get past goalie Pyotr Kochetkov .
The power play remained dormant, too, going 0-for-2 with just two shots on goal.
And though Laughton and John Tortorella termed it an “ugly” hockey game, there was at least one facet of the Flyers’ game in which they continue to make strides. And it’s arguably the most important aspect of all — their team defense.
After Friday’s 3-1 loss to the New York Rangers at home, in which the Flyers played as loosely as they have all season against a team that is built to take advantage of such looseness, a swift reset was necessary. It began with an about half-hour-long video meeting before Saturday’s game on Long Island, as a walk-through on the ice at the morning skate wasn’t feasible before the second of a back-to-back.
Backchecking routes/tracking, gaps and staying above the opposing team’s forwards were all areas of the game that got away from the Flyers in the first part of the Rangers game, ultimately costing them despite much better five-on-five play in the second and third periods. They were fortunate the Rangers didn’t have half a dozen goals after the first with all of the odd-man rushes New York was given.
“There was definitely lots of material. There was no shortage of film,” Sean Walker said of the video session. “Sometimes you need a refresher, and it was a good reset for us.”
Said Tortorella: “When you get into the sloppiness throughout the lineup, the cheating — it needs to be reset. Not a big deal. It’s not yelling, it’s not benching people. It’s just saying, ‘OK, let’s get back to this part of it.’ We know how to do it.”
Playing the New York Islanders on Saturday was fortunate, as they are less nimble and less skilled than most NHL teams up front. But they also can win low-scoring affairs with their elite-level goaltending. Sometimes it only takes one or two mistakes against them, and you’re cooked.
The game ended up being a generally sleepy, low-event evening that suited the mostly mistake-free Flyers just fine.
The reset took.
“Perfect timing was against the Islanders because you’re playing in the trenches, you know what type of game it’s going to be,” Tortorella said Monday.
Ryan Poehling was a little more direct about the competition when asked about the overnight corrections from Friday to Saturday.
“The Islanders was an easier team for us to do that against because they’re not as fast as the Rangers,” he said. They don’t play as fast.”
Despite giving up four goals Tuesday, they were still generally sound in their own zone.
The first goal was the most preventable as two Hurricanes outnumbered Travis Sanheim at the front of the net leading to Michael Bunting ’s marker, but the second and third were unfortunate (or, to use Carter Hart ’s term, crappy) bounces. Laughton’s attempted clear at the front of the net went off of Brenden Lemieux’s stick and skate before he slipped it home at 13:25 of the second to break a 1-1 tie, and Seth Jarvis’ late third-period score came when his bad-angle shot was going wide, but directed in off of Hart’s skate. The fourth was an empty-netter.
“Back end did some work, some good work,” Tortorella said. “Just didn’t have many forwards going at all.”
A sign of a good team, which we’re not sure whether the Flyers are or aren’t just yet, is that it quickly makes the kinds of changes necessary to prevent extended losing streaks. It’s something the Flyers of the previous couple of seasons haven’t been able to do.
The sloppy performance against the Rangers could have snowballed on them. It might have last season, or two seasons ago. That it didn’t is the sign of a team that is “maturing as a group,” Poehling said. “You see all these good teams and sometimes they don’t have their best games and they don’t let it affect them long-term,” he said. “For us to just kind of throw that one out the window, learn from it, move on — it’s definitely a good step in the right direction.”
Said Walker: “That’s kind of the team we want to be. You want to make sure you have that one hiccup, you can reset and get back to your game. I think we showed we can do that.”
Even after Tuesday’s loss, the Flyers remain second in the league behind the Hurricanes in shots allowed per game at just 27.4. That, and some underlying statistics, speaks to how consistent they’ve been in that area.
The Flyers. Defensive datapic.twitter.com/6i2Kx5YYQF
— Meghan Chayka November 27, 2023
Tortorella is evidently proud of that. He mentioned Monday that it took a lot longer this season to speak about the team’s defensive issues than last season, when they were ongoing. It took until 20 games this season for it to really be a glaring issue.
“How many times did I talk to you guys (the media) last year — defense away from the puck: get above the puck, stick on puck, close out. All we talked about was defense, because I think it needed to happen,” he said. “We needed to get that foundation straightened out.”
What also helps the cause is more options on the blue line now, too. Rasmus Ristolainen has played each of the last two games after missing the first quarter of the season with an undisclosed injury, and Marc Staal has been back for a week after he went out with a rib injury Oct. 19. That meant, with Egor Zamula a healthy scratch again, the only defenseman under the age of 27 that suited up against the Islanders and Hurricanes was 22-year-old Cam York .
Whether that’s a good thing at this stage of the Flyers’ rebuild is up for debate. What isn’t is that the Flyers have made noticeable strides defensively all over the ice. Further, the win over the Islanders and performance against the Hurricanes suggest that if they do have an off performance like they did Friday, they can quickly move past it.
“When we can flip the page that quick and turn it around ... it goes a long way,” Owen Tippett said. “That’s the belief we have and trust we have in each other in that room.”
(Photo of Rasmus Ristolainen: Tim Nwachukwu / )
