Ersson Struggles Continue as Flyers Suffer Lopsided Loss Against Tampa Bay

The Flyers looked lost against Tampa Bay tonight, getting blown out 7-2 while getting steamrolled in the faceoff circle and on defense. It felt like watching a slow-moving accident in real time with Samuel Ersson putting up his worst game in recent memory, all culminating in the worst loss on home ice this season.

The Flyers came into tonight’s game against Tampa Bay with a shortened bench, with Jamie Drysdale going to injured reserve, as well as Travis Konecny and Bobby Brink announced as day-to-day. This made a huge difference at the start of the game, with the Lightning playing a much more physical hockey game.

The Flyers came out a little slower to start, and before the second minute of the first period, Nikita Kucherov scored a goal, and the Flyers trailed 1-0. This is nothing new for the Flyers, so no panic set in. They tied the game when Garnet Hathaway scored his first goal of the season with a tip and shot off a Noah Juulsen pass. 2 minutes later, Kucherov snapped a shot past Ersson to take the lead 2-1. Hathaway got into a fight with Declan Carlile behind the play, and he stayed under the skin of the Lightning all night.

Both teams came out of the intermission playing better defense, and the Flyers were advancing on the Lightning defenders, but a few sloppy passes allowed Tampa to counterattack and put the heat on Ersson, and Nick Paul finally got one through, after Ersson let rebounds squirt free, giving Tampa extra shots.

In the third period, the Lightning kept their foot on the throttle, scoring 4 goals with Gage Goncalves scoring 2 goals, Brandon Hagel scoring one, and Yanni Gourde getting one. Owen Tippett scored one with the man advantage as well. The game ended with one of the most lopsided losses of the year for the Flyers at 7-2.

If you had told me after the first period that this would be the outcome, I would have never believed you, yet here we are.

Power Play Finally Breaks Through Without Konecny

Tonight’s game started with a lot of the same for the beleaguered power play unit for the Flyers. They had a chance early, though there were more shots than normal from this unit, very few made Andrei Vasilevskiy nervous at all. In the third period, Tippett took a slap shot which Vasilevskiy wasn’t able to see, and for the first time in a while, the power play unit put up a goal. Though it didn’t affect the result, it was what the power play unit had been missing, effectively all season.

With the penalty kill being so good, it shows that the Flyers have the ability to play kill off penalties, but when it comes to being offensively aggressive with the man advantage, they are absolutely toothless.

With Konecny day-to-day, Rick Tocchet should shake up the unit a bit to try and jump start this power-play unit. Now might be a good time to experiment with new personnel. I’d like to see Denver Barkey and Matvei Michkov matched up; that possible creativity might be just what the Flyers need.

Ersson Gets Roughed Up Yet Again

It was another start where Ersson gave up more than 5 goals, and just looked terrible all game. He was beaten every way possible tonight. There were a few things that have continued to repeat themselves in these games — in games where the opponent takes less than 25 shots, Ersson’s goals against is almost 1.20 higher than when he sees a higher volume of shots.

The other thing that became blatantly obvious tonight is that he is giving up far too many second scoring chances because he’s not controlling rebounds, and this is starting to really hurt him, as it did twice tonight. The third is that Tampa Bay, much like Calgary did on New Year’s Eve, picked on him stick side all game, and he had no answer.

He had an .868 save percentage coming into tonight’s matchup, which is already far below where it needs to be and a major step backwards for him in comparison to last year, but tonight’s .696 save percentage is only going to make matters worse.

I’m not sure if it’s time to send Ersson to Lehigh Valley so that he can get more reps and work on the issues that have plagued him thus far this season, but something has to give. Sitting behind Vladar isn’t helping him, and the Flyers can’t afford to let him continue to play like this in hopes that he gets his groove back.

Flyers Are Dominated in the Faceoff Circle Again

A huge part of this loss tonight for the Flyers is that they continued to get beaten in the faceoff circle. The Lightning won 63% of the faceoffs, and this is another area where the Flyers truly need to improve.

They started off the season doing well with winning faceoffs, but that has been trending downwards since mid-December. They came in tonight 49.4% faceoff winning percentage. On December 1, they were at 53.2% faceoff wins. In the games where they have not played like themselves, they get beaten badly in the faceoff circle.

This is one of those little things that add up in a game where the Flyers are playing top-tier talent. The margin is already so thin that they can’t afford to give other teams a huge advantage in an area that is so critical to success. With Tampa coming back to play in South Philly on Monday, in a home back-to-back, this is something that Tocchet and the coaching staff need to address immediately and correct this trend right away.

While we can write tonight off as an off night for the Flyers without several key pieces, there were quite a few things that should be sounding alarms in the coaching office. They have a couple of days to correct these issues before we see this same potent Lightning team again. Time for the coaching staff to address what we all see.

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