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Stars 5, Flyers 1: Flyers lose their third straight

The Flyers lost their third game in a row, this time to a visiting Dallas Stars team, 5-1. Having played just yesterday afternoon, the Flyers were on the second game of a back-to-back and without Carter Hart in net, and the Stars took advantage.

The big gap in play revealed itself slowly over the course of the game, with the Flyers generating shots and chances in line with the Stars. The biggest difference was the Stars capitalizing on those chances, especially the power play opportunities. Dallas scored on two of their three opportunities, while the Flyers not only failed to score on any of their six, but they allowed a short-handed goal and didn’t register a shot on a full minute of 5-on-3 play. It’s the kind of special teams play that will pretty easily tilt a game in the opposite direction unless you have someone like Carter Hart in your net, which they did not.

So its three in a row for the Flyers, and while their play hasn’t been terrible over this stretch, their record and place in the standings is starting to counter-balance some of those lucky-feeling wins from earlier in the season. Things are looking a little more like what we were all expecting from this Flyers team this season.

First period

The Stars made quick work of the game’s first goal, with Tyler Seguin carrying the puck into the Flyers zone and making a pass that Matej Blumel put past Sandstrom just two-and-a-half minutes in.

Seguin deflected another puck in the net just two more minutes later, but a Flyers appeal revealed their entry to have been offsides by seemingly just a hair.

In the latter half of the period, Travis Konecny took a hooking penalty on Seguin, sending one of the league’s best power plays to work. The Flyers killed it off, but the Stars controlled a lot of the play even following Konecny’s exit. They’d get their true second goal on an unfortunate bounce when an Esa Lindell point shot glanced off Justin Braun and into Sandstrom’s net, sending the Flyers to the first intermission down by two goals.

Second period

The Flyers followed suit, scoring on the same end with similar quickness in the second period. A truly beautiful series of passes from Tippett to Konecny to Tippett to Hayes to Konecny gave Konecny his sixth of the season and put the Flyers within one.

They rode that momentum straight into a drawn penalty less than a minute later when Seguin got dinged for interference. The power play looked strong, but to no avail. Some more penalty excitement came a few minutes later, when Kieffer Bellows slashed Nils Lundqvist and the extended play on the delayed call led to a group scuffle in front of Sandstrom. The Stars lethal power play would not miss a second opportunity, and another Lindell shot changed direction—this time courtesy of Joe Pavelski—and beat the Flyers goalie.

That 3-1 score would hold for the remainder of the period, giving the Flyers a tall comeback task, despite both teams recording 33 shot attempts at 5-on-5 and the Flyers recording more 5-on-5 shots on goal, 20-16.

Third period

The Flyers got a big chance to start the final frame when Ryan Suter held Travis Konecny cutting towards the net, but it pretty quickly the game in the opposite direction, as they lost the faceoff and a 3-on-2 rush developed in favor of the Stars, with Luke Glendening redirected an on-ice pass from Ty Dellandrea up over Sandstrom’s shoulder.

Tyler Seguin took another penalty with roughly five minutes past, and the Flyers ensuing power play looked legitimately dangerous, but could not find twine.

The game got out of hand for the Flyers all but officially when Travis Sanheim took a penalty and Jason Robertson scored in the waning seconds of the Stars powerplay, giving them a four-goal lead. The Flyers would draw two more penalties, even

Stray stats

  • The Flyers fall to 76-48-32-1 (W-L-T-OTL) against the Stars all time.
  • There were three penalties involving both Travis Konecny and Tyler Seguin, as the former drew two from the latter and committed one on him. Konecny also drew a penalty on Suter.
  • This was the third consecutive game that the Flyers outshot their opponents at all strengths and still lost. They outshot the Stars 38-31 at all strengths and 28-22 even strength.
  • Travis Konecny was everywhere today—he put six shots on net and extended his point streak to five games.
  • The man who has played more minutes than any other Flyers skater this season was once again the ice time leader—Tony DeAngelo logged over 24 minutes, including 6 on the power play and 3 on the penalty kill./

Stray thoughts

  • How is Joe Pavelski still doing this? His style of net-front play seems like it shouldn’t allow him to continue to excel at age 38, but not only is he one-third of one of the best lines in the NHL right now, he had three points, including a net-front deflection.
  • This game looked pretty bad by the end, but it felt competitive for a lot longer than it should have. It’d be easy to look at this game as a result of one team being fatigued and the other rested, even though the Stars are probably going to be much better than the Flyers this season.
  • I don’t know if everyone’s getting the same CarShield commercial with Ric Flair that I am like twice a commercial break, but is that Ryan O’Reilly there? And who’s the other guy? Are they famous enough to just appear in commercials without anyone mentioning their name?
  • I love when they cut to Torts right after something kind of egregious happens—like a shorthanded goal or something. It’s like they’re just waiting for an explosion.
  • Go Birds./
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