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Lack of Discipline: Thoughts on the Flyers, not the Refs, Blowing a Lead and Losing 4-3 in Overtime

Anthony SanFilippo

By Anthony SanFilippo

Published:

Flyers Bruins pick
Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

Right now, I feel like the person who has to update the sign in the work room about how many days it’s been since our last accident or injury.

Only here, in this space, I’m sadly changing it to zero days since Flyers fans blamed referees for their team’s loss.

And we were doing so well too. I felt like our group therapy sessions were working.

Look, I’m notorious for telling NHL refs they suck. I don’t blame them for changing outcomes of games – they simply have a job to do and do it, many of them poorly – but there has always been a bit of a harsher spotlight being shined on them by me.

The difference between me and the fans though is I will rip the refs, even when it benefits the Flyers. I’m an equal opportunity critic.

Flyers fans? Eh… not so much.

And although it’s been awhile since the refs felt the ire of the Philadelphia faithful, many of the fans fell off the wagon Wednesday night when the Flyers were whistled for three third period penalties – all of which were penalties – that led to three Boston Bruins goals, meaning the Flyers blew yet another two-goal third period lead and dropped the game 4-3.

David Pastrnak had a hat trick and assisted Patrice Bergeron on the game-winner (Bergeron also had four points), as the Bruins leap-frogged the Flyers into first place (better points percentage) in the East Division.

The last penalty, a terribly lazy interference by Scott Laughton, occurred with seven seconds left in regulation, so Boston didn’t get their third power play goal until the first shift of overtime, meaning the Flyers still managed to salvage a point from this wreckage.

And while the Flyers earned every bit of this loss and have no one to look at but themselves, the fans, well, they wanted to blame the men in stripes:

https://twitter.com/phanaticonbroad/status/1357174734379712512

Note: Laughton’s penalty was the most egregious of the three. We’ll get to it in a minute. I’m having too much fun in this Flyers Twitter rabbit hole:

Collusion! Yes! O.K., I’ll stop there. You literally can spend hours rooting through Flyers twitter to get these over-the-top reactions.

The fact of the matter is, the Flyers have now blown a two-goal lead FIVE TIMES this season. Oh, and as a reminder, the season is 11-games old. Actually, all five have occurred in the last seven games (Boston, New Jersey, Islanders, Islanders, Boston) and three of them happened in the third period.

That’s alarming.

Yes, the Flyers ultimately won some of those games, but to be as plucky and resilient as the Flyers have been, despite not playing their best hockey this season, to see them lose that focus long enough to let their opponent come back in the game repeatedly, especially in the final period, is an affliction that has a cure, but one that’s not immediate.

Against the Bruins, it was lack of discipline and the penalty kill not being able to cover for those mistakes. The PK had been playing better, prior to Wednesday. They killed off 14-of-15 penalties during their four-game winning streak, and the one they let up was a crazy bounce off the post and then off of Brian Elliott’s skate.

But against the Boston power play, which is consistently one of the top 5-7 power plays in the NHL, they were nonexistent and really missing Sean Couturier, although, I’m not sure even he would have made a difference in this one.

Let’s get to the penalties first.

I couldn’t find video of Nicolas Aube-Kubel closing his hand on the puck, but after the game, coach Alain Vigneault said it was definitely a penalty.

NAK had a pretty strong game up to that point. He was a wrecking ball on the ice and hit every Bruin he could. He was having a fine performance:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357142042049208322

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357150930538553346

But, as he has been prone to do, NAK took a penalty at an inopportune time.

This one wasn’t an egregious penalty, as he was trying to make a play, but it’s also something you have to know could be whistled, so you have to be smarter, in the moment, especially with a two goal lead and roughly nine minutes to go against a really good team.

It led to Pastrnak’s second goal and gave the Bruins life over the final eight minutes of the game:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357168063578320896

Now, let’s get to the Kevin Hayes penalty, because this is the one that has been the cause of a lot of consternation, and for this one, I have video:

I will admit, that I miss the days when this wasn’t a penalty. Hockey has been so watered down with the things you aren’t allowed to do anymore.

That said, by the current rule book, this is clearly a penalty. Hayes wraps his arm around Marchand and really gets his stick into Marchand’s midsection. He is definitely impeding the play. Maybe it wasn’t a hooking penalty, but it’s definitely a holding penalty and a borderline interference penalty, and it’s something you can’t do in the NHL anymore. Period.

Now, I know there are those who will argue plays like this happen all game long, and most of them don’t get called. That’s a fair argument, but it’s the same argument as holding in the NFL. It happens on every play, it’s a matter of when you get caught. In this instance, Hayes got caught, and went to the box with 2:01 remaining, and deservedly so.

This penalty leads to Pastrnak scoring his third goal with a little more than 14 seconds remaining in regulation, which was good enough to force overtime:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357171965019185152

And while that’s frustrating to most fans, there was at least a hope for the Flyers, as I outlined following the last win against the Islanders, because the Flyers are really good in overtime, and as a matter of fact, were it not for three incredible saves by Tuukka Rask in OT, the Flyers would have won the game up in Boston against the Bruins that they lost in the shootout, because they were the better team in that OT session.

Sadly, the Flyers would not be able to get to deploy their aggressive OT strategy in this one, because seven seconds after Pastrnak tied it and seven seconds before the 3-on-3 fun was set to begin, Laughton got lazy:

I mean, it’s clear as day. That’s interference. Sean Kuraly has a clear path to the puck and Laughton rubs him out. It’s interference all day long.

This is, by far, the worst penalty of the three. It wiped out the 3-on-3 for OT, where the Flyers excel, and gave the red hot Boston PP a 4-on-3 to start the OT and, well, it didn’t take them long to cash in:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357173157740830720

The Flyers did this to themselves. They blew this game with a lack of discipline over a span of nine minutes against a very good team with a lethal power play. They need to own it. This isn’t on the refs. This isn’t like the Flyers played this great game and had it taken away from them.

They were good the last seven minutes of the first period, the entire second period and the first 11 minutes of the the third period. That’s 38 minutes. Hockey is a 60-minute game. Against a team like Boston, 38 minutes isn’t going to cut it.

I give the Flyers credit for hanging in a game that looked early like it was going to be a blowout. Pastrnak scored on the first shift of the game, 12 seconds into the contest, and then Boston put on a clinic about how to hem a team in their own zone.

The Flyers worked their way out of it, were able to get out of the first period down just one goal, and then played great 5-on-5 hockey for the next period-and-a-half.

Kevin Hayes scored on a really nice pass from Travis Sanheim (he was the Flyers’ best defenseman in this game – and he wasn’t perfect, which isn’t saying much for the rest of the defense corps) to tie the game 1-1:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357155527915094016

Including this loss, the Flyers are still 26-1-2 in games Hayes scores a goal since he arrived in Philadelphia in the Fall of 2019. That’s a wild stat, but indicative of his importance to the team’s success.

Sanheim also set up Jake Voracek for his third goal of the season in the opening minutes of the third period as the Flyers stretched the lead to 3-1:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357162980270612481

What I like about this play is where Sanheim positions himself – just off the left dot – and that he has the awareness to know that Voracek is backdoor, sliding a pass there rather than taking a shot, which makes the goal happen. It was a really smart play by Sanheim all the way around.

And then JVR made another nice play on a 50/50 puck to spring Laughton and Joel Farabee on a 2-on-1 and young Beezer, as he is fondly called by his teammates, didn’t get cute with his shot:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357166209993764865

This was all good stuff. It left you sitting there wondering how a team that constantly gets outshot, that looks awful for stretches of games, can suddenly figure it out and find ways to win, especially against good teams like Boston.

I mean, in the first period alone, the Flyers had seven turnovers in their own end of the ice and iced the puck at least a half dozen times.

The turnovers were mostly on the defense. Ivan Provorov didn’t have a great game, and turned over a pair. Shayne Gostisbehere looked like the Ghost of the past two seasons and not the one who was on top of his game last week, surprising GM Chuck Fletcher with his excellent play against the Devils and Islanders, and he turned the puck over twice and was the guy doing most of the icing. He also was abused by Pastrnak on the opening shift of the game:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357136229041647616

And he can thank the post for getting caught in a bad spot on this one or else the Twitter marksmen would have really been targeting between the 5 and the 3 on his jersey:

https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1357149856771567619

But it wasn’t just Ghost. The third pair was not good. Even Sanheim had a turnover, as well as he played. Laughton had a turnover in his own end too…. it was a terrible start to the game.

Carter Hart was keeping them in the game. He finished with 31 saves, and I can’t sit here and say any of the goals were on him, because they weren’t. Hart deserved a better outcome for his effort in this one.

And then they figured it out and things were going smoothly… until the penalties happened in the third period.

“You feel like you’re in real good shape, but then you let elite players, by taking penalties, make a difference,” coach Alain Vigneault said after the game. “We put our hand on the puck in the first penalty. Hayes’s one I would have to see over again, but you wrap your arms around somebody even if you don’t touch them. Then Scotty doesn’t move his feet on the final one, fifteen seconds left and that’s a penalty. Referees are going to call that. It’s a lesson we’ll learn.”

Vigneault expanded his answer about the Hayes penalty, which, of course everyone wanted to talk about after the game:

“It looked like he put his arms around him. I don’t think he touched them very much. He put his arm around him and gave the opportunity to the referee to be a part of the game.”

It wasn’t necessarily a ringing endorsement for the call, but it also wasn’t an absolution of his player. That’s because the coach knows the Flyers, not the referees, are responsible for this collapse.

Hopefully now, you do too, and we don’t have to change the sign in the break room again for quite some time.

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Anthony SanFilippo
Anthony SanFilippo

Anthony SanFilippo writes about the Phillies and Flyers for Crossing Broad and hosts a pair of related podcasts (Crossed Up and Snow the Goalie). A part of the Philadelphia sports media for a quarter century, Anthony also dabbles in acting, directing, teaching, and strategic marketing, which is why he has no time to do anything, but does it anyway. Follow him on Twitter @AntSanPhilly.

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