Steve Mason Makes 46 Saves And The Flyers Lose 1-0 To The Islanders In A Shootout

Steve Mason had a terrible start to the season but over the past few games he’s been making a lot of progress. He’s tweaked up some things he wasn’t doing so well earlier in the season, has been controlling rebounds much better and has been using his stick a lot more. It’s been pretty enjoyable to watch, actually. Unfortunately, the rest of the Flyers suck. Mason put on a show last night against the streaking Islanders. The Isles probably should have stuffed home at least 3 goals in the first period alone but Mason stood on his head and stole a point in New York. The Islanders move to 5-0 on the season in the shootout while the Flyers, who mind you couldn’t score on Hextall’s kid son at practice move to 0-3. Makes me want to throw up all over my keyboard, and here are the other Flyers who make me want to vomit as well.

Oh and by the way, the Flyers got out hit 30-11 and out shot 46-21. Gross.

Matt Read
Typically I’m a big fan of Read’s play. He makes plays in the offensive zone and he sees the ice well. But nobody on the Flyers roster has been making me lose my mind more than Reader has over the past couple weeks in the defensive zone. I don’t know what in the hell is going on with his stick but he hasn’t been able to clear the zone cleanly yet this season. He makes horrible decisions with the puck and he also never seems to be in the right position defensively. That’s burned the Flyers for some goals against so far this year and I’m sure it’ll happen a billion more times this season if he doesn’t decide to figure it out.

Umberger and Vinny
Pretty sure you can’t find a single soul in the Philadelphia area right now who doesn’t despise these two men. It’s been over a month now since Umberger has registered a point and Lecavalier continues to be just as useless out there. It would actually be great if the both of them were invisible, but that’s not the case because they’ve been worse than invisible. If you couldn’t notice them at all out there at least they wouldn’t be driving me ape shit. But no, they have to go out and play like a bag of dicks and leave me the most confused I’ve ever been in my life with some of the things they decide to do with the puck.

Sean Couturier
Coots hasn’t been playing horribly by any stretch of the word, but he still looks like the least confident human being I’ve ever seen out there on the ice. There have been so many opportunities for him, not so much last night, to shoot the puck but he always seems to defer to passing. And last night’s shorthanded breakaway chance is indicative of how unsure of himself he is on his own skills. I get that Halak is a good goaltender and I get that you don’t bury every breakaway chance you ever get. But Coots looked like he knew he wasn’t gonna score the moment the puck got on his stick. Looked like he was about to shit his pants heading in on Halak and I’m sure the kid will end up having a strong season but as for now, he’s officially in Jordie’s dog house.

Shootouts
I don’t have anything to say here. It’s kinda sad how Laughton just got called up last week and he’s already in the shootout lineup. Goes to show you how much faith Chief has in everyone else’s hands out there, but can you blame him? Giroux put a pretty slick move on Halak but just wasn’t able to stuff it home.

The Flyers played like assjockies and wasted one of the best performances they’ll ever get out of Mason. Time to get ready for Black Friday.