Though it had not reached the point of outright elimination game, there was a distinct feeling heading into it that Game 3 would be make-or-break for the Flyers.
The dreaded drop to 0-3 in the series loomed, but if the Flyers learned anything from their Game 2 pop, it was that their process can work against this Hurricanes if they let it, and their confidence should have remained well intact as they returned home and looked to take the next step forward. And, to their credit, the Flyers looked distinctly like they could do just that in the start of Thursday night’s game — coming out with good energy and a renewed commitment to playing a fundamentals-focused offensive game, they had some real life early and managed to pour on some quick and very close chances on the Hurricanes.
But, after a couple of unlucky bounces kept them off the board, and another put the Hurricanes on it, the tone began to shift, and as the game went on, the Flyers, who once looked like they were controlling play pretty handily, couldn’t seem to get out of their own way. Their frustration manifested in a general breakdown of their effectiveness within their structure, of the structure entirely, but perhaps just as concerningly, their tempers flared to something ugly. Not a level of engagement that bought them energy and threw their opponent off their game — as they were able to do so well against the Penguins — but a winding up that had them running around, aimless but for their intention to hit someone, to drag someone else into a cheap physical battle, even if it came at the expense of their own chances and momentum along the way.
And while one could certainly quibble about — with how mightily both units have been struggling this postseason — how much a power play might realistically be expected to boost their standing in the game, the Flyers took too many chances off of their own plate to see if they could get their luck to turn. Because, for better or worse, this was a game where the officials were not shy about making calls, and the Hurricanes weren’t overly careful themselves about avoiding jumping over the line of acceptable physicality, and the Flyers were set to get a good share of chances on the man-advantage, but five separate times saw the Flyers shorten or outright kill a chance at a power play through a penalty taken of their own (whether through roughing or interference). It wasn’t productive physicality, it was nothing other than this team letting their emotions get the better of them, and that played a major role in them losing this game.
“We had nine penalties, you know,” head coach Rick Tocchet acknowledged after the game, “I don’t know. So, that’s a lot of penalties, you know. And we just got to understand, too, like you’re in a scrum, you take a punch in the mouth, then just don’t do anything. Just take the power play. If you’re going to go in, like I told you guys, [if] you’re going to go in, fight. If you’re not going to fight, then get out of there. So, a little inexperience from us in a couple of scrums.”
The lack of discipline in the purely physical realm is one thing, but playing a mature game is not just a matter of letting cooler heads prevail. Indeed, an even more meaningful show of maturity would have been to avoid letting this game get away from them, once the goings started to get harder. Despite the score, the Flyers being down by one at the first intermission, they played a very good first period, had been a couple of times just inches away from breaking that game open, and it felt all but a certainty that if they were able to continue to bear down and keep up that good work, that the results would begin to turn for them before too long. They just had to stick with it, but instead of doing that, frustration became palpable, and the Flyers began gripping their sticks too tightly, trying to force plays, and breaking out of their structure running around and trying to force plays, until things began to spiral away from them completely.
“Yeah, I mean, of course, it’s, you know, it’s inexperience,” Tocchet went on. “It’s, and not just saying young guys, I’m saying as a team, just knowing kind of sometimes you got to read the room. You know, if the officials are calling penalties, and they’re, you can tell they’re antsy, it’s not the right time to go and do something even borderline. And I think we do that. And then sometimes, I feel, [with] the puck, you got the puck and you just got to get it down low. You can’t try to make a play out of nothing. I think we tried that a couple of times. The first period, we didn’t, we moved the puck well, we got it by them. Against Carolina, I told you, you got to hit singles and we hit singles in the first period, and then we started trying to hit home runs. And that’s what happens. They capitalize on that. They’re good at that.”
All season long, the Flyers have emphasized the belief that they all have in their group, and touted the resilience that they’ve shown time and again to pull themselves out of tough spots, and while it’s true that all of that has been well in place throughout the regular season, in the biggest moment of their year, to date, that all broke down in a big way. The formula hasn’t changed, and the Flyers still have all of the tools to get themselves back into this series, to make things competitive again, but last night was a stark reminder of just how far — among the other host of on-ice factors — the collective ethos needs to go in order for this team to make their mark as legitimate contenders.
