“We played a good hockey game … Thought we played really well, just couldn’t score.” That’s all Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella was able to say with confidence after Sunday night’s 4-1 loss to the Florida Panthers.
A result which happened after his own Flyers team had 18 more shots on goal, more than double the amount of high-danger attempts, 11 more scoring chances, and had over 72 percent of the shot attempts at 5-on-5. Simply, it was a perfectly executed game for the Flyers except for two things: Scoring goals and not allowing anymore goals.
Tortorella was able to (briefly) speak on not scoring goals, but when it came to Flyers backup netminder Felix Sandstrom allowing three goals on the 14 total shots he faced, the coach was speechless. All he could do to express how he was feeling was two firm palms down on his podium, and ending the media availability immediately.
That is certainly an emphatic way to demonstrate just how frustrated the bench boss was at that moment.
To not be able to rely on your backup goaltender to save maybe a baker’s dozen amount of shots, is something that is so incredibly rare that it really deserves the silent treatment. Just a gruff look and some audible hits on some fancy-looking plywood, and we all know exactly what he wants to say, how he would say it, but doesn’t get to face the backlash of selling out a player publicly.
And it is just unfortunately a situation that Tortorella was forced to be put into. With Carter Hart gone from the organization forever (and hopefully never seen in the NHL again), Sam Ersson was put into the starting position and has performed well, but it is these games where you need your backup, where the Flyers have been lost.
Cal Petersen was bad and expensive, and now Felix Sandstrom might be even worse, but less expensive. That pair of attempted backup netminders have put in the worst performances we have seen between NHL pipes this season — and that’s hardly hyperbole.
According to MoneyPuck, only one netminder who has played five or more games in the league this season has a worse Goals Saved Above Expected rate than either Petersen or Sandstrom, and that’s Ottawa Senators’ Mads Sogaard, who allowed 19 goals in six appearances. All the numbers boiled down (we will not bore you with the actual statistics) essentially explain that both Petersen and Sandstrom are allowing more than one goal per game than they should, given the expected goals that they face. And that has cost the Flyers at least a few points in the standings; points that they could certainly use right now.
Now everyone should know exactly why Tortorella simply could not say or do anything more than keep his mouth shut, slam on some plywood, and walk out of the room when a backup goaltender’s name was mentioned. It is costing his team games where they should be winning, and they could be thrust out of a playoff position because of it.
The Flyers have just one remaining set of back-to-back games this season, so maybe, just maybe, we only have to suffer The Felix Sandstrom Experience one last time.
