So Where Do The Flyers Go From Here?
Little bit of a HOT TAKE ALERT coming here but I’m gonna just go ahead and say it… that game last night wasn’t exactly ideal.
Now I said this in my “recap” blog from last night. I didn’t expect the Flyers to go in to Pittsburgh and win game 1 of this series. In my head I had worked out that they’d lose the game 4-2 but that 4th goal would come on an empty net. A loss like that for the Flyers would be huge considering they gave up 5 goals to the Penguins in each of the previous 4 regular season matchups. A close 4-2 loss would huge in terms of building some confidence for the rest of the series. It would let Brian Elliott settle in a little bit. It would mean the Flyers were able to match the Penguins’ intensity for the majority of the game. It would also mean the Flyers probably stayed out of the penalty box as much as possible. So did I think they’d be heading into Friday night’s game with a lead in the series? Not really. But I thought they’d be heading into Friday with at least something to build on and possibly end up stealing one on the road.
What happened next was… well… holy fuck, boys, what the hell was that?
This right here was the most inexcusable goal from the game and the one that perfectly highlights the fact that the Philadelphia Flyers just didn’t show up to play that game last night. Some context here: The Flyers go down 2-0 early in the game. They catch a major break after the Penguins’ powerplay gets cut short and Evgeni Malkin takes a penalty of his own. So once the Flyers’ penalty is up, they had 1:12 of powerplay time to work with. I didn’t need them to score on that powerplay but at the very least, they could have started to tilt the ice the other way. They could have generated some chances, got the Penguins on their heels a bit and settled themselves into the game. Instead–the get absolutely nothing going on the powerplay, Malkin comes out of the box, slices through the Flyers like he’s a hot knife through butter, and then he might as well have been shooting a beachball on the backhand there because Brian Elliott wasn’t stopping shit last night. For starters, Jake Voracek needs to get tougher. I know he was just coming off of a powerplay and was looking to head to the bench, but when you have Geno Malkin coming down on you, you can’t just let him waltz on by without putting some sort of pressure on him. Not sure if you’ve ever heard of this Malkin guy before but he’s pretty decent. Gostisbehere just keeps backing up because apparently letting Malkin get to the slot without any contact is a part of the gameplan. And then yeah, Brian Elliott should be ashamed of his performance. I know the final score was 7-0 but this goal right here was where it was all over.
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So what do the Flyers do now? Clearly what they did last night wasn’t working. They couldn’t get the puck out of their own zone. They were sloppy on the powerplay and tried to make too many passed. The few chances they had on the night, they were just gripping the stick a little too tight.
Everything that could have gone wrong in that game went even worse than expected. Obviously some changes need to be made, right? Well probably not if you’re Dave Hakstol and the most stubborn son of a bitch on the face of planet Earth.
I don’t want to blame the whole thing on Elliott because you still need to score goals to win hockey games and the offense couldn’t do that. But this is the biggest issue with Dave Hakstol. He rewards incompetence and demotes guys who he seems to have a personal vendetta against. Like what the hell do the Flyers owe Brian Elliott? You don’t owe him the right to get back in the net. You don’t owe him anything. What the hell is Travis Konecny doing on the 3rd line while Michael Raffl continues to just slow down the Giroux/Couturier line? Dave Hakstol is too stubborn to be a coach in the National Hockey League. He never wants to admit that he’s wrong and will continue to make the team suffer just to try to prove his point. He’s done it all year long and unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon.
So if we can’t expect any roster lineup changes, well then what can the Flyers do because clearly they need to do something. Well for starters, they can do exactly what everybody in the world knows they need to do and stop heading to the penalty box. The Flyers took 4 penalties last night. Travis Konecny’s was less than a minute after Carl Hagelin made it 2-0. Sean Couturier’s ended early with a Jake Guentzel PPG goal. Scott Laughton’s was less than a minute after Sidney Crosby made it 5-0. And then Raffl took a hooking penalty late in the 2nd. So not only are the Flyers taking penalties, but they’re taking them at the worst times possible. You can’t get scored on by the Penguins and then immediately gift them 2 minutes on the powerplay right after. Clearly that’s a recipe for getting fucked.
Secondly, I guess the Flyers just have to pray that they’ve taken the Penguins’ best punch. Like it can’t possibly get any worse than that, right? And so what if the final score was 7-0. A blowout loss in game 1 counts just as much against you as an overtime loss would have. So regardless of the final score, it’s still only 1-0 in a 7-game series. Hopefully the Penguins wasted all of their goals in game 1 and there’s still a chance moving forward. There’s a reason why the Stanley Cup Playoffs aren’t one-and-done series. And the good news is that a series doesn’t even start until somebody loses a game at home. So it’s basically like last night never even happened. Right? Right.
P.S. – Honestly wouldn’t hurt to give him a call.