God, the Flyers are bad.
We’ve known this all season, really, but things are really exacerbated when they play against fast, skilled teams like the New York Islanders. And thus, in their last game ever at Nassau Coliseum, the Flyers were rolled by the first-place Islanders 7-4 in an MLK Day matinee.
Let’s just get right to a few random thoughts about the game:
- The Islanders are really speedy. Or maybe the Flyers were just extra slow today. Either way, it’s almost laughable in the neutral zone and it’s even more sad in when the Flyers get flat-footed in their own zone, which seems to be all the dang time.
- Zac Rinaldo was out with the top line early in the third — not sure why. may have just been a missed change — and Jaroslav Halak made a terrible, terrible play behind the net when handling the puck. It popped right out to Zac, who fed a streaking Claude Giroux in the slot for an easy empty net goal.
- The Flyers actually scored quite a bit today, capitalizing on a few Islanders mistakes and slipping a few weak ones by Halak. But they were never even close in the game, and all four goals came while the Flyers were down more than two goals. So, you know.
- The Flyers gave up 20 shots in the second period. That’s not shot attempts. That’s shots. Like, ones that actually got to the goal. The Islanders went an entire period and averaged a shot per minute. That’s just … really not good for the Philadelphia Flyers. Not sure of full-game numbers because Nassau Coliseum is a giant pit where the NHL’s stats go to die.
- Rob Zepp was pulled for Ray Emery in the second period, but this had nothing to do with Zepp’s play, really. This loss wasn’t on any one player. The Flyers were just uber-bad.
- Michael Del Zotto was one of the few Flyers to have a good game, at least to the naked eye. He made a few good plays on the defensive end, stepped up a bunch in the offensive end — scored a goal! — and led the team in even strength ice time. He is a good player and god, please do not scratch him for Nicklas Grossmann again Craig.
- On the flip side, Carlo Colaiacovo was injured in the third period. Just sucks for the guy, who had finally gotten back into the lineup. The Flyers are down another defenseman and Carlo has injury history on his left leg, which is where he appeared to get hurt. Sigh.
- Brandon Manning seems like the likely call up for Colaiacovo, which while awesome for him could mean that he’ll miss this weekend’s AHL All-Star Game.
- Lots of writers on Twitter tried placing blame on Sean Couturier, saying he was a minus-5 on the day and therefore horrible. We remind you that plus/minus is a horrible stat that you should not care about, especially on days when there’s such a lopsided number like that.
