Flyers’ Special Teams Struggles Cost Them a Sweep

The Flyers came into the Stanley Cup Playoffs with one of the league’s worst power plays. On Saturday night, that season-long weakness showed up at the worst time. In a 4-2 loss to the Penguins in Game 4, the Flyers were not only exposed on the man advantage, but the penalty kill as well.

Philadelphia went 0-3 on the power play and allowed the Penguins to score early with a power-play goal coming from Sidney Crosby, who scored five seconds after Denver Barkey was sent to the box for high-sticking. That goal gave the Penguins newfound life and the spark they needed to send the series back to the Steel City.

The result is frustrating because the Flyers’ special teams have not been much of a problem during the series. In the first two games, the Flyers killed off seven Pittsburgh power plays and added a shorthanded goal in the mix. Once Game 3 rolled around and they were able to score on the power play, it gave everyone a glimpse of what they could look like on the man advantage.

Everyone knew the Flyers’ power play was bad all year. It’s rare that a team with a power-play percentage of 15.7% has a three-games-to-one lead in the playoffs. But this is the battle of Pennsylvania, so you know there was going to be a ton of commotion, but that leads to unnecessary penalties, which the Flyers could have avoided, and penalties that give the Penguins immediate scoring chances. 

Game 4 was a reminder that the playoffs aren’t over, and the Flyers have to treat every game like it matters. Even the smallest bit of confidence can get a team rolling and gain back its momentum. For the Flyers, that worked against them on Saturday night, as those unnecessary penalties helped the Penguins seize control instead of what happened in the first three games, where the Flyers were able to get in their head.

“I think we’ve just got to make sure we play a better 60 minutes,” Christian Dvorak said after the loss. “It took a little bit to get going tonight. We like our 5-on-5 game for the most part. If we play 5-on-5 for 60 minutes, we increase our odds”.

The Flyers have been the better team this series, but Game 4 really showed that their special teams needed to be addressed if they were to go far in the playoffs.

The power play also deserves as much scrutiny as the penalty kill. Besides those two goals in Game 3, the Flyers have gone a combined 0-10 on power play opportunities, including their 0-3 performance on Saturday night. Although they didn’t score their first power play goals until Game 3, they were scoring consistently on 5-on-5, which they excel at. But in Game 4, a Penguin getting sent to the box is what gets a crowd going, but instead, the sold-out Xfinity Mobile Arena groaned and booed on. Slow puck movement, blocked shooting lanes, and poor perimeter passing were some of the reasons the Flyers came away empty all night. 

Instead, that gave Pittsburgh the pressure they needed, and as they were consistently killed off, they built more confidence. 

Later, Crosby hurt the Flyers again in a 4-on-4 situation, setting up Kris Letang for a goal that made it 3-1 Penguins, another key moment that put the game in the Penguins’ favor. Travis Konecny did not hide from his role in that sequence. 

“I’m kicking myself on Letang’s goal, the 4-on-4, I just lost a wall battle,” Konecny said. “It was too bad because then we got one right back, so it kind of feels like we could have tied the game up if I didn’t make that mistake. We’ll move on from it”. 

That’s what most of the Flyers were like postgame on Saturday night. They know they are still up 3-1 in the series, but anything can happen in playoff hockey. At even strength, the Flyers had spent most of the series dragging the Penguins into an uncomfortable mess, but that wasn’t the case at all on Saturday night. Instead of using the power play to settle into the offensive zone or the penalty kill to drain the Penguins’ belief, Philadelphia let the Penguins gain confidence in those areas. Daniel Vladar, though, thinks the Flyers will be fine. 

“If somebody told you before the series, we were gonna be up three games to one after four games in this series, you guys wouldn’t believe us,” Vladar said. “Nothing’s changing for us. Still positive. They are a good team. It’s not easy to win four in a row against a team like that. We were good. We will have a big bounce back Monday night.” 

Rick Tocchet emphasized this during his postgame press conference.

“It’s hard to win every game,” Tocchet said. “We just gotta go back to the drawing board.”

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