Saturday night’s series opener in Raleigh was, in short, not an especially inspiring showing from this Flyers team. The Flyers found themselves quickly on the back foot in this one, struggling to work under the pressure of the Hurricanes’ checking game and within the tempo they were operating at, and as a result, the Flyers would generate a postseason-low 19 shots on the way to being shut out for the first time in these playoffs.
Now, despite the troubles with the pace of the game and the overall lack of scoring delivered in this game, it wasn’t completely devoid of chances entirely. It was still a lower shooting affair — the Flyers recorded just 19 shots on goal across all situations, and though they had a respectable 48 total shot attempts, a mere 14 of them came from close enough to the goal to be classified as scoring chances, as the Flyers struggled throughout to get to the interior — a game with some good motion but not a lot of pop, but not no pop at all, just not from the places they might have expected heading into this game.
That is, for all of the offensive firepower that the Flyers have at the top of their lineup — even as they were notably without Owen Tippett for this game — most of the Flyers’ best offense came from their fourth line trio of Luke Glendening, Sean Couturier, and Garnet Hathaway. Seeming to struggle the least with the pace the Hurricanes were throwing at them, this line was able to get to work and establish a style of play more in line with what the Hurricanes were bringing, with an uptempo approach and a fierceness in their own checking to both create and jump on turnovers to build chances up from.
And though they weren’t able to break through on any of those chances, the group remained some of the Flyers’ better generators of offense across the whole of the game. Glendening didn’t record a shot attempt, but saw his checking game working well to open up space for his linemates. Hathaway had one shot make its way on net, and had another great attempt on a breakaway only just broken up by an even greater diving play by K’Andre Miller. And Couturier combined for a team-high six shot attempts and five shots on goal (three of which came at 5-on-5), amounting for more than a quarter of the team’s whole offensive output from that game. And along with all of that, they were the only line that wasn’t tinkered with in this game, and instead allowed to just keep plugging along and doing what they were doing.
Of course, the big picture takeaway from this showing is less forgiving. None of this is a slight on these players who did deliver a sound effort and who managed to show up in this game, but if it’s your fourth line who’s driving the best of your offense and skating circles around the younger core at the top of the lineup, that’s a problem.
“I don’t know if we were mentally prepared to play tonight,” head coach Rick Tocchet told media in Raleigh after the game. “Winning our playoff series, [almost] not making the playoffs… there was a lot of excitement. I don’t think we got down to earth quick enough for this game.”
Perhaps one of the perils of bringing a young team that’s still developing — both as far as their on-ice process is concerned, but also their mental approach to these high-leverage situations at the top level of the game — into the thick of a playoff battle against a team like this one is that they’re bound to deliver a showing like this eventually, allowing the positive momentum to swing all the way back around on them into something that’s unproductive. It’s all a process, learning how not to get too hight, and now we’ll see them tested again in avoiding getting too low. In some ways, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the team’s veterans were largely the ones who appeared most prepared for this moment, as they have been here before, and they’re more practiced in handling these moments.
But whatever the reason might be for this line showing up and the rest of them (for the most part) not, the Flyers will need to find a way to take these more nebulous lessons and turn them into tangle action as they shift into this second meeting of the series in under two days’ time. This was not the start that they would have hoped for, but all the same, the series is far from over. It’s not going to be easy, as the Hurricanes demonstrated well just how lethal they can be, even when they’re not even firing at full power, but the Flyers have a good blueprint in front of them to at least draw this matchup a little more even, they just need to make the most of this opportunity in front of them to make use of their short memory and move towards implementing solutions in short order.
All stats via Natural Stat Trick and the NHL.
