Flyers Embarrassed at Home by Kings

These are just the kind of games Flyers fans will need to get used to this year.

After playing a tough game for two periods, the Flyers were finally overpowered by a more talented team. It sucks to watch, but that’s just where this team is right now. They’re young, they’ll make mistakes, and they’ll play hard, but that won’t always result in a win, and against one of the best teams in the West, the Los Angeles Kings, it wasn’t enough tonight.

Before the game even got underway the Flyers were making news when it became clear that John Tortorella would healthy scratch defenseman Cam York. After pulling him during the second period of the Flyers’ previous game against the Red Wings, Torts didn’t let him see the ice in this game either. The Flyers head coach has been very critical of the team’s defense over the last week, and this benching seems to be a clear message to the entire squad that their level of play is not good enough.

Once the puck did drop, however, Philly would play a competitive hockey game for a good 40 minutes, unfortunately for them, hockey games are 60 minutes long.

Kevin Fiala got the scoring started with a breakaway goal halfway through the first period that gave the Kings the lead. Noah Cates quickly responded with a goal of his own to even the score at 1-1. This was only Cates’ fourth goal of the year but it was his second in two games, suggesting his offensive game might start clicking.

Tanner Jeannot would open up the second period by putting LA back on top just over 90 seconds after puck drop. The Flyers weren’t done yet though, as Tyson Foerster, who was also credited with an assist on the Cates goal, scored two goals of his own in the span of about three and a half minutes to give the Flyers their first lead of the game.

The trio of Cates, Foerster, and Bobby Brink has been a very reliable and exciting third line to watch this year, and they were the only real sign of life from this team tonight. None of these three are older than 25, so it is very possible we see this combination for a long time to come.

From this point on though, there was nothing positive about the way the Flyers played the game. With under a minute to go in the second period, they allowed a goal to longtime Kings captain Anze Kopitar. This tied the game when Philly easily could have headed into the locker room with a lead.

It seems like this goal just broke the Flyers completely because, in the third period, they were unable to score at all while LA managed to find the back of the net four more times. It was so bad that when the Kings were up 5-3 Tortorella pulled goalie Aleksei Kolosov, which resulted in an empty net goal. No surprises there this sort of thing happens all the time. However, with a three-goal deficit Torts decided to just leave Kolosov in to finish the game, but he couldn’t even do that, allowing one more goal to sneak by him before the final buzzer finally sounded.

Like I said before, with a team like this these types of games are going to happen. The Kings are juggernauts in the NHL right now and they proved it to everyone who watched that game. That doesn’t make it any less painful though. We just have to take the few positives we can from the game and move on to the next.

The Flyers will host the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday, December 20th. The game can be watched on NBC Sports Philadelphia.

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