The Philadelphia Flyers have now lost four consecutive games after dropping Thursday night’s collision with the Detroit Red Wings by a score of 3-0. While the score line isn’t pretty, there were at least a couple things to take away from the game.
The basics
First period: Scoreless
Second period: 1:37 – Dylan Larkin (Lucas Raymond), 7:15 – Moritz Seider (Lucas Raymond), 10:08 – Andrew Copp (Michael Rasmussen, Jeff Petry)
Third period: Scoreless
SOG: 29 (PHI) – 17 (DET)
Some takeaways
Flyers never broke out from under and didn’t deserve the score line
After such a boring first period that had both teams not even break double-digits in shots on goal and ended with zero goals scored, the Red Wings immediately opened the scoring and never look back. All they needed was 10 minutes of showing off their offense and actually being able to put the puck past the goal line, and that was what earned them the two points over the visitors.
The Flyers were just never able to hit that next gear and get that finishing final touch. It was a weird game this way, especially considering that territorially Philadelphia had Detroit’s number all game long.
Ever since the puck dropped, the Flyers had the advantage at 5-on-5. They were able to push and control the share of scoring chances and any general offensive number you want to think of, while the Red Wings simply just took advantage of them eventually getting some good scoring chances. Because, look, the Flyers not only got quantity but quality in their offense as well.
It was simply just one of those games where you have to throw your hands in the air and say “that’s hockey” over and over again.
Olle Lycksell one of the rare bright spots and could be something
It was Olle Lycksell’s second game since being recalled from the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms as winger Owen Tippett went down with an injury, and he might just truly stick around.
With no other Flyer really making anything worse with connecting passes or getting that scoring chance to really hit right, the 24-year-old forward Swede managed to sometimes just do it all himself and really displayed a level of skill and some tools we didn’t truly know he had.
Beyond this one scoring chance, Lycksell had another one where he skated a mohawk around the perimeter of Alex Lyon’s crease and tried to pot one over his shoulder. He seemed to just be buzzing around and while maybe he isn’t the prototypical Tortorella forward that can check as hard as ever, he does have some tendency to dazzle at the right times.
A toolkit that not many current members of the Flyers roster has, but it hasn’t resulted in any production quite yet.
Sam Ersson shouldn’t be blamed for this
While Ersson’s save percentage looks like someone who shouldn’t really be in the NHL — and we believe it’s just because the Flyers are too good defensively to give up an amount of shots for that number to be fine giving up a couple goals — this loss isn’t really on him.
It’s easy to point at the losing goaltender while the other one posts a shutout, the 24-year-old netminder just got extremely bad luck on the goals allowed.
The first one, Dylan Larkin’s 20th goal of the season and eventual game winner, was after an extremely weird rebound where the puck essentially flew up in the air and it went right to the goalscorer’s feet.
No one saw where that puck was until it was in the back of the net.
And the second was a bad deflection off of Morgan Frost to perfectly put it over Ersson’s shoulder. While he could have been in a better position, it’s not solely on him to account for a terrible deflection in front of him off a powerful shot. And, well, we can’t really say the third was anyone’s fault, but maybe he should have had it.
This game does not look good and the box score doesn’t like Ersson’s performance, but it shouldn’t really be a talking point as a reason that he’s not ready for the starting role, or anything like that.
Next up, the Flyers have to face the big and bad Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon. Losing four straight and then facing one of the best teams in the league on a weekend matinee is not fun at all.
