The Philadelphia Flyers had a closed door meeting after their ugly loss to the Avalanche on Tuesday. Dave Hakstol gave them a punishing practice yesterday, and Ron Hextall publicly called them out. Then they came out last night and scored on their first shot to take an early lead.
Ultimately, none of it mattered.
The Flyers again lost in convincing fashion last night, 5-2, to the Washington Capitals. The Capitals are a better team than the struggling Avalanche, but that is not much comfort. The players already look frustrated, and I wouldn't blame fans or management for feeling the same these days. The Flyers only managed 20 shots on goal, and have now lost eight of their last nine games.
Game Flow
Goals:
1 – 0. Laughton (VandeVelde). PHI on-ice: 25, 21, 76, 3, 15
1 – 1. Oshie (Kuznetsov). PHI on-ice: 24, 14, 17, 3, 15
2 – 1. PPG, Giroux (Simmonds). PHI on-ice: 10, 17, 28, 32, 93
2 – 2. PPG, Chimera (Kuznetsov, Williams). PHI on-ice: 24, 25, 3, 55
2 – 3. Williams (Beagle, Chimera). PHI on-ice: 25, 21, 76, 22, 55
2 – 4. PPG, Chimera (Niskanen, Wilson. PHI on-ice: 24, 28, 3, 22
2 – 5. Backstrom (Johansson, Wilson). PHI on-ice: 93, 21, 76, 32, 82
Forwards
(Bubble size indicates 5v5 ice time)
This was an uncharacteristically poor performance for the Giroux line. They did fine against the Laich line and the Alzner-Niskanen pair, but fared much worse against Carlson and were eaten alive by Burakovsky-Backstrom-Johansson. The lack of 5v5 goals for this line continues to be disturbing, and it might be time to consider breaking up Voracek and Giroux. I'm not sure what other cards has Hakstol has to play in this lineup.
The Couturier line has nice possession numbers for this game, doing particularly well against Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Oshie. This line had by far the most shot attempts, although all they had to show for it the goal column was a minus-1 night.
It was a bad night for the Laughton line. They opened the scoring, but they did worse in possession than they usually do, and conceded two goals.
Defense
(Bubble size indicates 5v5 ice time)
This was the debut of the Medvedev-Streit pair. They played lots of minutes, but like the Giroux line, they were eaten by the Backstrom line. They ended the game minus-1, but this pair may need more evaluation time.
Del Zotto-Gudas had positive numbers, save for their ice time against the Backstrom line — there's a theme emerging here. Gudas also played big minutes last night and led the team in hits, as usual.
Lastly, it was another nice night for the unlikely pair of Schultz-Schenn. It helps that they saw the least time against the Backstrom line, but on any night where you can claim 75 percent shot attempts against Ovechkin, you're doing something right.
Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.
