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Flyers in 5: Rick Tocchet Says the Boys Need to “Dig” More Early
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The Flyers lost 4-2 to the Penguins in Game 4 on Saturday night.
It’s alright. They’re fine. It would have been nice to send the Yinzers home with a sweep, but winning four in a row in the playoffs is difficult, IN FACT – it’s only happened three times ever for the Flyers. That was the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinal against the Rangers, and the 1974 and 1975 quarters when they swept Toronto and Atlanta.
After this loss, Rick Tocchet said:
“Yeah a few adjustments (to make). I don’t think it’s major. They came out, I thought we (were throwing) pucks away too much. In the second half we started coming into our game, so yeah, I don’t think it’s (making) a ton of adjustments. I think we need to dig a little bit more. Didn’t see much digging early from some guys and we gotta make sure that right from the beginning we gotta dig off of that, I think.”
…
“I thought some guys weren’t moving their feet. Seemed like a few guys were sluggish. We’re gonna have to figure that out, get some energy there… but I liked the fight back. That’s a good hockey team over there. It’s hard to win every game. But that’s it. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board.”
Hard to disagree with any of that. The requisite level of jam was missing from the team and that conveyed to the crowd as well, which was reactionary at best. At least on television it didn’t feel like the same amount of juice was present inside of Xfinity Mobile Arena, but Philadelphia sports fans often ebb and flow with the performance they see on the ice, or the field, and that seemed like the case in this game. The Flyers didn’t give them much to be excited about other than clawing back a couple of goals to keep the deficit to one.
Tocchet also hinted, perhaps, at a lineup change for Game 5. Matvei Michkov could be a candidate, as he hasn’t had much of an impact on the series. Denver Barkey and Travis Konecny had been less effective before scoring their goals on Saturday night, though Konecny should take the majority of the blame for the third Penguins goal, which ended up being the winner. The Flyers aren’t at any point where they need to bench somebody to make a statement, but a tweak here and there to get things moving is worthwhile. Tocchet could simply bring Emil Andrae back into the lineup for Noah Juulsen, or give Alex Bump a look.
Honestly though, they gave up a crap goal on a rare Dan Vladar mistake and then Pittsburgh scored their first goal on the power play. Clean it up and say out of the box and they’ll be fine.
Game 5 Monday night in Pittsburgh. Flyers in 5.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com