Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella had some choice words when one of his best players made an extremely poor decision on the ice for the Colorado Avalanche to open the scoring in Monday night’s game.
Nine and a half minutes into the first period with the Flyers hosting the Avalanche, Cale Makar made it 1-0 for the visitors by firing an absolute laser past rookie netminder Aleksei Kolosov. It was a weird goal. Felt like something you would see during the yearly All-Star Game, where defensive coverage is the last thing on players’ minds. Makar was handed acres of ice on a silver platter, and it was glaringly due to Flyers winger Travis Konecny just leaving his coverage.
Just Cale Makar things 🥬 pic.twitter.com/EJ1qFjPais
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) November 19, 2024
Woof. It was immediately obvious just why one of the best (if not the best) defenseman in the whole world was able to just glide up the middle and send the puck home in the high slot. Konecny is caught staring daggers at the puck on Nathan MacKinnon’s stick along the boards, as he reverses back to the point and in the process, left Makar all alone.
Maybe Konecny just forgot that there were five Avalanche skaters on the ice, not just four. Maybe he just lost count. Maybe he just wanted to tell MacKinnon how cool it is that he’s once again one of the highest scoring players in the NHL this season. Regardless of the reason, Konecny was caught all alone and as the sole reason why the Avalanche opened the scoring.
“That first goal was my fault,” Konecny said after the loss. “It was a bad read. I’m puck watching. It’s frustrating when you come to the end of the game and it’s a one-goal game.”
Yeah. Looking back and feeling the burden of responsibility for the Avalanche concretely having one more goal than your team is not the best. And even with the 27-year-old winger taking the blame for this goal against, Tortorella decided to go in a little bit deeper and roast him for it.
“He should be,” Tortorella said after a reporter brought up Konecny being hard on himself about the goal. “It’s dumb. You just left the best player in the world to go chase a puck. It’s just — if we’re going to get over the hump, that can’t happen. Not from a guy we’re depending on.”
It is something that a player who just signed an eight-year contract with the Flyers and is seen as a player they can grow with and still be here when they want to be a perennial playoff team, should not be doing. Hopefully, it was just a one-time gaff.
And as Tortorella points out later after the game, it wasn’t just Konecny that was making poor decisions on Monday.
“We’re only down 2-0 heading into the third. We have a chance. Bobby takes a stupid high-sticking penalty, Tyson taking a stupid high-sticking penalty,” he said. “A lot of the game I liked, as we kept on going, but goddamn we do stupid stuff. It’s so aggravating. The stuff that we do that should be out of our game. That’s what aggravates me.”
It was just a stop-and-start type of game from the Flyers. As soon as they would get some momentum and look just inches away from tying the game or getting back in it, they would yank themselves back by negating their own power play by taking some dumb, stupid penalties. That was really their chance but instead, they were handed a regulation loss at home.
Next, the Flyers are hosting the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday and that is yet another team, that should take advantage of any mistakes on the ice. Hopefully, the Flyers just decide to not glide away from some of the best hockey players in the world, in their own zone.
