Flyers drop 8 straight in loss to Islanders
Photo by Philadelphia Flyers
For the second time in three months, the Flyers have lost eight straight games.
They did it again Monday night with a 4-1 loss to the New York Islanders.
Period 1
Scott Laughton won the opening faceoff to begin the night at the brand new UBS Arena.
Flyers first shot on goal came 15 seconds into the first period by Oskar Lindblom. That’s something the Flyers have struggled with as of late getting that first shot on goal. Just a few seconds later, Scott Mayfield got a holding penalty. An early opportunity was given to the Flyers to get out in front nice and early. But, in typical fashion, they did anything but that. It’s crazy, they just can’t do anything on the power play.
Both teams were a defensive mess early, with the exception of the Islanders’ penalty kill work which was fine. It was ugly. A positive was that the Flyers seemed faster early. They seemed to have energy.
The Flyers headed to another power play at 7:42 as Oliver Wahlstrom went off for hooking. It was another sloppy man-advantage for the Fly Guys. One decent passing sequence towards the end of the two-minutes nearly set up a good chance, but other than that nothing happened.
The Flyers had as many power play shots on goal (one) as the Islanders had shorthanded shots on goal half way through the first period through two power plays. So if you wanted a quick recap of how it was going, here it is.
The first period ended 0-0. I don’t even know how to describe these 20 minutes. What a mess of a period all around. Neither team played well, but the Islanders were certainly better. Shots were 13-8 in New York’s favor. I’m lucky I didn’t fall asleep during the period, or was that unlucky?
Period 2
Casey Cizikas won the opening draw to begin the second period.
Flyers immediately got their best chance of the game so far at 0:46 on an odd-man chance from Travis Konecny to Laughton, but New York goaltender Ilya Sorokin got over in time to make the save. The decision to pass there from Konecny was not the wrong one — always good to force goalies to quickly move side-to-side to improve shot quality — but he could’ve for sure’ve made that shot. Better choice would’ve been to shoot.
Connor Bunnaman headed to the sin bin for slashing at 3:09. The Islanders went on their first power play of the evening. Sorokin standing on his head in this period, and it just continued as the Flyers had two good shorthanded opportunity. Laughton knocked one off the post, then Cam Atkinson got multiple shot denied by Sorokin after. While that was unfortunate, the Flyers did kill Bunnaman’s penalty.
Flyers goalie Martin Jones made up for it fortunately with a huge stop on Zach Parise to keep this one scoreless. This game was all about the goaltenders and sloppiness.
Josh Bailey caught Ivan Provorov up high, and caught himself a two minutes stay in the penalty box at 9:24. The Islanders killed the power play as the Flyers played like they have all game, sloppy. It finally caught up to them. Jones couldn’t see around a screen, Brock Nelson sniped one past him to give his Islanders a 1-0 lead at 11:44. Even if Jones saw it, it was one heck of a placement of a shot. Will say, Provorov’s work in the neutral zone leading up to that goal was pretty poor, to say the least.
Just a bit after, Robin Salo put up a shot from the point, and it made it’s way through traffic (and I mean rush hour on 95 type traffic) and went past Hart to make it 2-0 New York and get his first NHL goal at 14:28. This was the second game in a row the Flyers have given up back-to-back goals in about three minutes.
Here’s a fun little timeline from The Athletic’s Charlie O’Conner on the Flyers:
Not ideal.
Konecny hadn’t scored a goal in a very long time. Can’t even tell you the last time. At 17:12, that changed. A shot that deflected off of Noah Dobson and past Sorokin gave Konecny a wild goal, and the 100th of his career.
Joel Farabee with a tie game on his stick on a breakaway shortly after Konecny’s goal, but Sorokin shut him down.
That did it for the middle period. Thanks to Konecny, the Flyers stayed alive in this game as they were down 2-1 after 40 minutes.
Period 3
Laughton kicked off the final period with a faceoff victory.
Flyers had a delayed penalty called on them at 4:44, but Anthony Beauvillier didn’t care. Beauvillier found the puck and absolutely buried it to make this a 3-1 game.
After the penalty was delayed for a little bit, Oliver Wahlstrom headed to the penalty box for hooking. The Flyers went on a huge power play. They didn’t execute, though, an they went 0-for-4 on the man advantage.
Flyers pulled the goalie with 2:30 left to for the extra attacker. James van Riemsdyk hit the post at one end, Matt Martin ices it into the empty net at the other, and that did it. Flyers lost 4-1.
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