It’s a good thing the Philadelphia 76ers fired coach Brett Brown on Monday.
It’s a good thing the Eagles countdown to opening day is less than three weeks.
It’s a good thing the Phillies bullpen is still the worst in the history of the sport.
Because the Flyers performance in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the New York Islanders, one in which they lost 4-0, is one that the team is glad to slide under the carpet of the Philadelphia sports landscape family room in hopes of drawing attention to themselves more following Game 2 on Wednesday afternoon, which they expect (and hope) to be a different outcome.
Because if this was the only thing going on in the minds of Philadelphia sports fans today, things would get ugly.
Yes, there’d be overreactions. Yes, there’d be ridiculous suggestions. Yes, there’d be misguided criticisms.
After all, hockey is a tough sport to just watch.
But there’d also be some real analysis and some honest assessments that need to be shared with the fan base. And hopefully, when all is said and done, everyone realizes this was just one game and the sky is not falling.
That said, Game 2 on Wednesday is the Flyers’ most important game maybe since the elimination game in the Stanley Cup Final loss to Chicago 10 years ago.
Here’s what we learned:
First off, I disagree. This is definitely going to be a long series. But…
It’s one thing to play inconsistently against Montreal and still be able to pull out four wins in six games. It’s another thing against the Islanders.
The Islanders are deeper, heavier, more talented, and are more bought in to what their coach, Barry Trotz, is preaching than the Canadiens.
While the Canadiens put pressure on you with speed, the Islanders put pressure on you with precision. And there is a difference. The Flyers were able to take advantage of mistakes by Montreal that result from overplaying because of speed, or getting out of position, or being forced to take a penalty because of compensation for a teammates over-pursuit.
The Islanders just flat out play you systematically. They rarely make mistakes. Their pressure is just relentless. It comes at you in waves, and even when it does, it’s structured so that if it doesn’t force a turnover, it allows for the attacking forwards to get back into position, clog the neutral zone, and then pressure you again.
And if you get through that and somehow get set up offensively in the Islanders’ zone, they still pressure the puck carrier with one man while the others clog up shooting and passing lanes. so you have no choice but to stay to the outside.
In Game 1 the Flyers found some success in the second period against the Isles when they just threw shots on goal from distance and created havoc in front of the net. It ultimately didn’t result in a goal, as the team was shutout for the second time in these playoffs, but it showed a way to hem the Islanders into their own end and to create good scoring chances.
The thing the Flyers need to do better if that’s going to be the approach, is making sure they have players working to get into the mass of humanity in front of New York goalie Semyon Varlamov, because he’s played well in each of the three rounds for New York, so you need to make his life difficult.
You need to score ugly goals to beat the Islanders. Plain and simple. That said….
… if you had people working to establish space in front of the net and get rebounds to put behind the goalie, those numbers would definitely increase.
That they were in the first period. And the Flyers changed things up in the second period and got better results. They made a forward an option in the middle of the ice and not just along the boards, and seemed to help in the second period, but then the Flyers got a little desperate in the third period and got away from what was working.
They ran into this problem with Montreal as well.
The Flyers have a tendency to get away from their gameplan when they get behind but stick to it when they are ahead. It’s no surprise then that the Flyers are 7-0 in August when scoring first and 0-3 when giving up the first goal.
They try to get creative and generate quick, big plays, rather than be safer and work up the ice in increments.
It all starts with the defensemen. They need to be smarter on breakouts. The pairing of Ivan Provorov and Matt Niskanen have been OK with breakouts, but just OK. Phil Myers and Travis Sanheim get hemmed into their own end a little too much for my liking, especially since they are such fluid skaters. Their outs tend to be more of the “get it out of the zone quick” variety and less of the “lets carry it up ice and make something happen” variety.
Then there’s the third pair.
And it doesn’t matter who is with Justin Braun – whether it’s Robert Hagg or Shayne Gostisbehere – breakouts have become a poisoned pill.
Hagg is below average on breakouts and makes up for his shortcomings by playing smart, physical, positional defense. And that’s all well and good, but you have to get the puck out of your end. There’s a reason the Flyers have only 11 goals through seven playoff games.
Gostisbehere is just a gambler, and if you dabble, you know what happens when you gamble. Sometimes you win and look good, others you lose and look bad.
That’s Gostisbehere to a tee.
As for the forwards, they are so eager to breakout of their scoring slump, that they often try to get a head start on the breakout. This hurts the Flyers. They need to win patches of ice inch by inch. They can’t try and cheat that approach, and too often the forwards do.
The Flyers need to commit to their breakout strategy en masse. Otherwise, why bother playing?
Steven’s tweet is asinine. The Letter B’s response is more appropriate. Yes, Claude Giroux needs to score more. Although, comparing what was going on in 2018 or 2016 to now is ridiculous. It just helps further the narrative. Each playoff season needs to viewed on it’s own.
But, as far as I’m concerned, no goals in seven games, which is the right way to view this, is also concerning.
Being the captain has nothing to do with that. He’s a captain for reasons that have nothing to do with how he’s playing on the ice.
Still, he needs to score – or at least help his teammates score. If Giroux were piling up assists while his teammates were potting goals, that would be absolutely fine.
But that’s not happening either. He had a good stretch of game against the Islanders – one where Varlamov made a big save on him on a slapper from the high slot and another chance nicked the far post.
Still, no goals. For anyone.
And while his all-around game hasn’t been poor, the Flyers need to find offense in a hurry and Giroux is being given the greatest opportunity to provide it and hasn’t come through. He’s not alone. Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny have been equally stymied. Even Kevin Hayes, who along with Jake Voracek have been the best Flyers forwards in the playoffs, has just one goal.
All that has to change. I’d expect some lineup changes for game 2. Could we see Giroux reunited with James van Riemsdyk, who was a healthy scratch?
Might Voracek join Hayes and Konecny to create a line that has some players who have been playing well play together?
These are decisions for Alain Vigneault, but no matter what he does, these guys have to start producing. They are running out of time to get started quickly. It has to start in the next couple of games or this is going to be a disappointing ending for the Flyers.
I went on WIP last night with Jody MacDonald and he was just as upset about this decision by Vigneault as David was above. There were dozens more on Twitter last night. Islander fans were laughing about it. Gambling insiders were suggesting Vigneault took the over in the game (The under is 32-11-2 in Toronto by the way).
Here’s the thing… I don’t understand the backlash.
The Flyers were down 3-0. They had generated no offense at 5v5. The Islanders had not taken a penalty to that point. Why not gamble and try to get a goal with an extra attacker?
Does it matter if you lose 4-0 or 5-0 or 10-0? The outcome of the game is still the same in each instance. Thankfully, this ain’t soccer with aggregate scoring, so that’s not an issue.
Look, if it were a two-goal game, I agree. Way too soon. But a three goal game? I think it’s a worthy gamble.
Did it work out? No. But the Flyers were approaching last gasp territory anyway. Would people have been ok if he did it with five minutes to go? What’s the cutoff that swings you from faux disbelief to acceptance?
Maybe if the score were 4-1 or 5-2 and the Flyers had shown an ability to score at 5v5, I’d view it differently. But they were 0-for-everything. It was a worthy gamble.
It didn’t pay off, but I didn’t have a problem with it, and really, nor should you.
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