The Flyers Are Going To Mess Around And Make Us Believe Again, Aren't They?
Jared Silber. Getty Images.I've been on this Earth for long enough at this point to realize that Philly sports can really only handle 1 team being borderline great at all times. Now sometimes all 4 of the major teams in this city are dog shit at the same time. That can also be true. It's kind of like how a square can be a rectangle but a rectangle can't be a square. Sometimes every team in Philly can be dog shit but there can never be a time when all 4 of them are buzzing at the same time.
The sooner the people in this city accept that reality, the better. Because I've been able to reconcile the fact that the Flyers are dramatically underachieving this year based on the Sixers success. #1 team in the Eastern Conference, winners of 5 straight games and 8 out of 10 of their last games. If the Flyers have to have one of the most disappointing bluelines in the league as well as their franchise goaltender having a god awful season in order for the Sixers to keep being a wagon, then so be it.
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But then we get to last night. And like pretty much every other Flyers game this season, last night's game was all about an inconsistent effort. This team either lights it up in the 1st period and completely falls apart in the 2nd, or its the other way around. Either way, they're incapable of playing a full 60 minutes of quality hockey. But the final 3 goals of the night for the Flyers? Well…
Let's just go in order here, starting with this supremely spicy snipe from Joel Farabee.
There have been plenty of reasons to be disappointed in the Flyers so far this year. Guys like Ghost and Sanheim and Myers have all regressed. Carter Hart looks pedestrian at times. The team in general seems to never want to shoot the puck. But there are a couple of guys who have been bringing it pretty much every night. Coots is always one of those guys. JvR is quickly turning into one of them. And then you have Joel Farabee who has been putting on a full season of Mythbusters to debunk that the sophomore slump is actually a thing. Joel Farabee is a killer. He's confident, he plays the game with just the right amount of edge that allows him to play a little bigger than he actually is, and clearly he can snipe the tits off some tendies. Pretty solid recipe for success right there. And if the Flyers are going to figure out a way to stop constantly making these games harder on themselves than they need to, well then it's going to be guys like Joel Farabee just simply being better than almost everybody else they're out on the ice against at all times.
Now that shot from Farabee was pure skill. But let's head to the next goal real quick to see how the Flyers' brains were able to come up with probably the best highlight of the night.
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The Flyers had already scored on the powerplay following a Julien Gauthier high-sticking penalty. But this time Giroux drew the double-minor after getting smoked in the face by another Gauthier high-stick. And 40 seconds into that powerplay, he and Jake Voracek drew up this ridiculously cheeky give & go. And just to make sure that nobody accidentally gives credit to Michel Therrien for that play, it looks like this was a Jachobe special.
But as sick as that setup was, the best part about that goal is you could tell that Giroux and Voracek were going to do everything they possibly could to force the team to win last night. They had a complete and total meltdown for the first 18 minutes of the 2nd period. And it sucks that it takes total meltdowns like that for the Flyers to finally wake up sometimes, but seeing Giroux and Voracek pretty much take the game over from there and make sure they didn't piss away those 2 points was huge. Again, if the Flyers are going to turn things around here and finally go on a bit of a run, it's going to take the core of 28 and 93 leading the way.
And speaking of 93 making sure the Flyers didn't piss away those 2 points…
You couldn't risk this game going to a shootout. Not while Carter Hart still seems pretty shaky and the other team has a weapon like Artemi Panarin ready to pick him apart. So just to make sure that none of that happened, Voracek said fuck it and stayed on the ice for seemingly the entire overtime just to end it himself.
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So on a whole, it was another Flyers performance which was littered with inconsistencies and a lot of bad moments from guys who really should be better at this point. Not to name any names or anything like that but I swear to god, every time either Sanheim or Myers have the puck behind their own net it ends up being a failed clearing attempt to a turnover. But when things were looking their ugliest, it was Giroux and Voracek stepping up to will this team to victory as well as a little help from Joel Farabee who is playing some serious "fuck you" hockey lately. That's a good sign of things to come. That's reason enough to believe in this team to stay alive long enough to make a deal for another defenseman before the deadline and then really turn it on. I'm nervous about believing, but I'm ready to be hurt again.