That’s a wrap on the road trip, folks! The Flyers closed this thing out with a matchup against the Leafs up in Toronto, another in a difficult slate of action to begin the calendar year, but they came through with a pretty impressive showing. It wasn’t completely commanding, or overly flashy, but the Flyers hung with a very good team, and managed to get this one to overtime to collect a standings point. They fell short of the win, but there’s a lot that they can come away from this one pleased with. Let’s get into it.
The Basics
First period: 3:24- Tyson Foerster (Cates, Ristolainen), 4:02- Matthew Knies (Matthews, Tanev), 18:52- Oliver Ekman-Larsson (Lorentz, Dewar)
Second period: 11:08- Scott Laughton (Couturier, Ristolainen)
Third period: No scoring
Overtime: 2:25- Morgan Rielly (Matthews, Tavares)
SOG: 32 (PHI) – 25 (TOR)
Some takeaways
Cates line buzzing
There’s a real handful of positives that we could pull from this one, but the continued high level of play of Noah Cates’s line is certainly towards the top of the list. His line, with Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink, was buzzing right from the jump — they had an extended shift in the offensive zone on their very first shift out there, getting some nice puck movement going and a couple good looks, and then on their second shift, they combined on a goal for Tyson Foerster, to give the Flyers an early lead. Now, that’s not a lead that lasted very long (more on that later), but it still remains that this line set the tone nicely, and continued to click nicely through the remainder of the game, though they were held from scoring again.
Fedotov’s return
Tonight also saw Ivan Fedotov get back in for his first bit of action since December 5 against Florida. That’s a long time not to be playing, particularly for a goaltender, and to come back in against an opponent as tough as the Leafs was going to be a big undertaking for him, and on the whole, he fared okay in the face of it.
Brian Boucher made a good point on the broadcast that the big task for the skaters in this one would be to avoid making any unforced errors, and to do their best to protect their goalie at least through the first 20 minutes, but they didn’t do great in that aim — Ryan Poehling’s defensive zone turnover led to a goal against, and another turnover behind the net later in the period opened up another great chance for the Leafs. So Fedotov didn’t have as much help as he might have hoped through those early goings, and while he did make a few huge saves to bail them out, he also had a few instances (particularly on the play leading up to the second goal against) where he looked uncomfortable, and was pulled way out of position and was left scrambling as a result. Now, to his credit, he settled in pretty nicely from there. All in all, he stopped 23 of the 25 shots he faced, and came up with some big saves before this all ended on a bit of a sour note, with that shot from Morgan Rielly in overtime just flat out beating him.
Power play shows some flash
The Flyers’ power play experience has been a bit of a rollercoaster so far this season, but things have seemed to be trending up for them recently, and that continued into tonight’s game. They were held off the board in this one — though Laughton’s goal did come just 11 seconds after a penalty expired, for whatever that’s worth — but this certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. Across their three attempts, they put up 10 shot attempts and five scoring chances in total, and were able to get a nice bit of puck movement going, to get the Leafs penalty killers chasing. Now, it would have been nice to see them break through for a goal, but they way they were moving the puck around in this one was a big step forward from where they were not too long ago. There’s still a lot for them to build on, but they’re in a decent spot to serve as a foundation for that.
Closing out
The Flyers did well to get this one to overtime and to at least get the one standings point to close out this road trip. It might not have been the highest of highs that they could have ended on, but it was close. Altogether, too, this was a pretty commendable effort from the Flyers — after falling behind in the first period to a one of the top teams in the league, they didn’t deflate or get flustered, but they stuck with it, getting their chances and settling into their defensive play and avoiding giving up any more big plays for free. The reality is that a more skilled team might have been able to break this game open when the door cracked open, but the roster they do have at their disposal played well within the parameters they have.
And while the nitpickers might look at this game and note that even this rested Flyers team maybe should have been able to do a bit more damage against a Leafs team playing in the second half of a back-to-back, but we won’t harp on that too much. The Flyers managed to hang with a very good team, and indeed got the better of them through stretches, and that’s something they can be happy with, and hope to build on as we go forward.
