The Flyers skated with Vegas throughout the night in a relatively low-event contest, making their way to overtime against one of the best teams in the West before a Travis Konecny turnover in the 3-on-3 portion of the proceedings gave Jack Eichel a chance to set up Mark Stone in front for a 3-2 Vegas victory.
The basics
First period: 6:07 – Zach Whitecloud (Ivan Barbashev, Braeden Bowman); 16:11 – Trevor Zegras (Travis Sanheim, Christian Dvorak)
Second period: 12:53 (PPG) – Mark Stone (Pavel Dorofeyev, Jack Eichel); 16:08 – Noah Juulsen (Christian Dvorak, Carl Grundstrom)
Third period: No scoring
Overtime: 2:47 – Mark Stone (Jack Eichel)
Shots on Goal: VGK 21 – PHI 19 [NOTE: The Flyers and Golden Knights each had exactly five shots in the first period, nine in the second, and five in the third, which I think is neat.]
Ramp-up period(s)
In a game featuring two of the best teams in the league at preventing 5-on-5 offense, the start to this one played out unsurprisingly. Both teams took a bit of time to get going, with very little offense generated either way for a big chunk of the first period. That said, it felt like the Flyers were the ones fighting the puck just a bit more than the visitors were. A handful of potential big chances in or around the offensive zone either ended with blocked or missed shots or were smothered by Vegas before they turned into much of anything. That eventually became a problem for the Flyers, as a rush by Christian Dvorak became a blue line turnover that was in the Flyers’ net a few seconds later courtesy of Zach Whitecloud finding his way all alone in front.
Around halfway through the period, it felt like the Flyers started to get their legs under them, with a few good shifts of puck control in Vegas’ zone; by the time the period had come to a close, the Flyers (courtesy of the ESPN broadcast’s tracking) had had more offensive zone time than Vegas had, and shot/possession metrics had drawn more or less even. Yet, for all of that cycling and hard work, it was just a high, high skill play that ended up evening things up, as Travis Sanheim flung a pass from well above the circle all the way down right next to the net to Trevor Zegras, who had no issue knocking the puck behind Akira Schmid and into the net.
And truthfully, the second period played out somewhat similarly (Flyers start quietly, Vegas puts a push together and eventually scores, Flyers find their footing and score late in the period), though it felt like the pace had definitely picked up both ways when the teams came out of the first intermission.
Christian Dvorak, main character?
Dvorak’s line (with him centering Trevor Zegras and Travis Konecny) was on the ice more than any other tonight by a pretty healthy margin, and deservedly so as it felt like they were the only group consistently getting much going for chunks of this game. At the center of it was Dvorak (literally, you see, because he plays center, but also figuratively), who was very active in this one. He did have the mistake that tipped off Vegas’ first goal, but also tallied helpers on both of the Flyers’ goals, more notably on the second one as he put the puck right where it needed to be for an absolute clapper by Noah Juulsen (more on that later), and it felt like he was right there on some of the Flyers’ near-misses early on.
Dvorak has now handled more total ice time than Sean Couturier in three straight games, and while that’s still a pretty small sample, it’ll be worth keeping an eye on how Tocchet divvies up the ice time going forward.
Poor Emil Security
We’ve generally been pretty excited here to see what Emil Andrae has done since coming back up and effectively cementing his role in the lineup, but this looked like his worst game in a while. He did get turned around a bit at his own blue line on that first goal, but more than anything he just looked uncomfortable with the puck for most of the night. He flubbed a handful of passes and loose pucks, with the low point coming in a late second-period power play when he failed to keep the puck in at the corner two different times. It was a pretty surprising showing from Andrae, whose puck skills generally don’t betray him like that. (He was also on the ice for the game-loser in OT, though both Konecny and Sean Couturier probably bore more blame for that moment going sideways than did Andrae.)
The night wasn’t without its positives — he did chase down Mark Stone in the third period to snuff out a breakaway while the game was tied, and he managed to draw a penalty in the defensive zone late in the first period — but the bottom-line performance was not great, and he was a team-worst -0.7 in on-ice Expected Goals at 5-on-5. He still ended up getting the fourth-most ice time of any Flyers defenseman from Rick Tocchet, but on a night where Ty Murchison and Noah Juulsen were on the ice, that may have been out of necessity as much as anything. Hopefully this is a one-off, because the difficult decisions will be coming soon on the blue line as Cam York and Rasmus Ristolainen are near their returns and even as Murchison continues to be a pleasant surprise in his NHL time so far.
We need power, it’s cold
The power play tonight:
Three opportunities (6:00)
Zero goals
Six total shot attempts, only one of which hit the net
Bad. Real bad. Probably cost-them-a-point bad, in all honesty.
Tocchet certainly did not like what he was seeing after those first two power plays (both mostly occurring within the second period), making the decision before the team’s third and final power play late in regulation to swap Matvei Michkov (who had a very quiet night beyond than some decent shifts in the first period) and Owen Tippett out of the top unit, putting Bobby Brink and Noah Cates in their places in an effort to balance out the two units a bit more. This also did not work.
The power play is in full-on rut mode, having only collected 5-on-4 goals in two of their last 13 games. Tocchet and the assistants are going to have to keep looking for answers here.
Leftovers
- If you did that thing where you just make everybody on the screen a silhouette of themselves so you don’t know who it is and then showed me this shot to tie the game in the second period and forced me to guess which Flyer in this game took it, Noah Juulsen might have been 18th out of 18. But! Here we are! The puck went in the net about four seconds after Juulsen came onto the ice for his shift. Tidy work.
- Solid enough night for Dan Vladar, even if the bottom-line numbers are not going to look great. He did a particularly good job keeping Vegas off the scoreboard early in the second period when they had a number of good chances to re-take the lead. At the same time, you would have liked to see him grab that puck on the power play in the second that became a rebound goal for Mark Stone.
- Trevor Zegras played 23:05 tonight. The only other two times he was above that amount of ice time were also overtime games.
- Carl Grundstrom is making it pretty difficult for the Flyers to decide to send him back to the Phantoms if and when that time comes. He was bumped up to Nikita Grebenkin’s spot on the third line during this one, and it’ll be interesting to see if he’s there again on Saturday against Carolina.
- That turnover by TK in overtime, man. Just can’t happen.
Statistics via evolving-hockey.com unless otherwise noted.
