After picking up a big win over the Bruins on Saturday, the Flyers again hit the road for a quick trip up north to face off against the Maple Leafs. Coming in to face another team also well — if still a little distantly — in the fight to remain in the hunt for a playoff spot, this wasn’t going to be an easy matchup for the Flyers, but despite the depleted lineup they had to deal with in this one, they were able to gut this one out and come away with the win in the shootout, and extend their winning streak to three games along the way.
The basics
First period: 15:22- Dakota Joshua (Maccelli), 18:38- Christian Dvorak (Cates, Barkey)PPG
Second period: No scoring
Third period: 14:42- Noah Cates (Brink), 17:30- William Nylander (Tavares, Knies)PPG
Overtime: No scoring
Shootout: Nylander (goal), Michkov (goal), Matthews (no goal), Zegras (goal), Domi (no goal)
SOG: 25 (PHI) – 31 (TOR)
Some takeaways
Missed opportunities early
The Flyers have certainly had their fair share of poor starts to games this season, but tonight what unfolded for them was just more of a weird one. The Flyers came out with some good energy to start this one — encouraging to see, coming off of a busy last week and a bit of travel — and were able to get their legs going early. And this bit of extra jump did pretty quickly translate into an early edge in possession gained — the Flyers were able to pour on a good handful of close chances through the very early goings, getting themselves knocking on the door, and putting the Leafs back on their heels.
It was a good bit of work to put up those chances early, but the bigger struggle within that was in actually closing on those chances — the Flyers were getting some good looks but just couldn’t bury them, including on their first power play of the night, and then took another penalty to cut their second attempt short, so while there were some good things happening, there was a fair bit of getting in their own way playing out there. And that lack of ability to capitalize on any of their early chances stung to a particular degree when the Leafs started to get going late in the frame, and were able to come up with the first goal off of a breakdown in coverage in the corner for the Flyers.
This goal given up after those missed chances had the chance to be a real back breaker for the Flyers, but they were able to shrug that off pretty quickly and get themselves right back to it. A third power play attempt in that single period certainly helped them out as well, but the Flyers were able to build on the work they’d done on the man-advantage earlier in the frame, get a good bit of puck movement going, and finally put one away on a scramble in front of the net. And suddenly, they were right back in this one.
Back to Vladar
After putting up one of his best showings of the season on Saturday against the Bruins, it’s not a big surprise that the Flyers opted to go right back to Dan Vladar for the start in this game. And this one might not have been the busiest of showings for him, looking at it from a more zoomed out perspective, looking at the shot volume in totality, but it was still a difficult task for him.
That is, the Leafs shooters were testing him in this one, but the pacing of those shots coming at him was quite uneven — there were long stretches when he wasn’t seeing much of anything in terms of shots, and then suddenly things would ramp up sharply and he would be hit by a flurry of shots, and, what’s more, his job was made a little more difficult when the Flyers lost one of their steadier defenders in Nick Seeler to injury in the second period — and that makes it quite difficult on a goaltender to settle in to a game, but Vladar still did quite well, all things considered.
It wasn’t perfect — the mishandle from him on the Leafs’ second goal was a tough one — but it was still a quite solid showing on the whole, as he came up with some massive saves in regulation, and ultimately how he was able to lock things down through overtime and the shootout (on the whole) was critical in the team securing this win. It’s not a surprising effort from him, at this point, but it’s one we can continue to appreciate, all the same.
Barkey returns to the lineup
In line with something of an emerging trend here, this was, if nothing else, a high-event game for Denver Barkey. It was a bit of a question mark just how he would look in this one — on the one hand, he would be dealing with the high emotions and perhaps pressure coming along with playing against his hometown team, while, on the other hand, having to shrug off anything that might be lingering from having been scratched for the last game against the Bruins — but Barkey was able to shake off anything that might have been hanging over his head and get himself going quickly in this game. There were some good things that was able to bring quickly in this one, as his pace was working well, and he was able to create a really good look for himself on the power play, before ultimately assisting on Dvorak’s power play goal later in the period.
On the flip side though, the pendulum swung the other way on him when he took a penalty late in the third period, giving the Leafs a chance to tie things up again on the power play, and that wasn’t an opportunity they passed up. So that wasn’t a great look for Barkey, but we can look past it a bit since this one still ended in a win for the Flyers. All told though, this was a showing for Barkey which was much more good than bad, and it will be interesting to see how he’s able to build on that from here.
Offense a little thin without Konecny
One of the big headlines coming into this game was the news that Travis Konecny would be a late scratch for this one, as he’s dealing with an injury. It would be a big challenge for the Flyers to keep this thing rolling without their leading scorer, and the outing that they delivered as far as the offense was concerned was, we can say, just okay.
The Flyers haven’t been an especially high shot volume team, and that didn’t suddenly change for them tonight — at 5-on-5, they were able to generate just 16 shots on goal, and a pretty meager three high danger chances, and came away with just 46.15 percent of the share of shot attempts generated in this game. The goals they were able to put away were good ones — it was a nice bit of work from Dvorak to stick with the jam play in front of the net on the power play, and it was a nice bit of passing from Bobby Brink to set up Noah Cates for their second goal of the night — but it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that, without their leading scorer and, in some ways, one of the tonal leaders of this offense available for this game, that their offense largely wasn’t at its most dynamic.
Of course, while it’s true that this wasn’t their most major output or flashiest of showings, but to the Flyers’ credit, it was still enough to get them this win. So we’ll take that, and see what they can do from here, if this absence for Konecny stretches beyond just one game.
Michkov, Zegras come up big in the shootout
We gave Vladar his credit — which was hugely deserved — for his performance for the Flyers in overtime and the shootout, but he’s not the only one who put in some major work for the team outside of regulation. We actually don’t have much to offer here in the way of analysis, we’ll just close this thing out by saying: look how sick these shootout goals from Michkov and Zegras were.
MATVEI MICHKOV SHOOTOUT MAGIC. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/cWv1xyUpLi
— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) March 3, 2026
Trevor Zegras is so automatic in the shootout…
— NHL (@NHL) March 3, 2026
Ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/1rAq6FdxEU
All stats via Natural Stat Trick and the NHL.
