Takeaways: Flyers hit new low in 6-3 loss to Rangers

On a snowy Saturday afternoon, the Flyers lost their sixth game in a row, falling 6-3 to the Rangers. Bad goaltending, bad defensive structure, and bad special teams were again the story, and the Flyers remain in free fall.

The basics

First period: 6:22 – Travis Konecny (Trevor Zegras, Travis Sanheim), 7:05 – Artemi Panarin (Vincent Trocheck, Alexis Lafreniere), 7:26 – Mika Zibanejad (JT Miller, Braden Schneider), 8:25 – Brennan Othmann (Will Cuylle) 
Second period: 5:38 – Zibanejad (Panarin, Trocheck) (PPG), 8:25 – Zibanejad (Miller, Scott Morrow), 14:31 – Panarin (Lafreniere), 16:47 – Travis Sanheim (Konecny) (SHG) 
Third period: 8:01 – Zegras (Owen Tippett, Denver Barkey)
SOG: 28 (NYR) – 28 (PHI)

Some takeaways

Konecny opens the scoring…

While the game quickly became 3-1 Rangers, there was a brief moment in time where it looked like a good start for the Flyers. For the first time in their last five games, the Flyers scored first courtesy of Konecny’s 15th of the season. It was a nice piece of work from Trevor Zegras too, who executed a solid zone-entry and a crisp cross ice pass to find Konecny. 

…and Kolosov immediately implodes 

Stop us if you’ve heard this before. The Flyers goaltending was god-awful again. This time, it wasn’t Sam Ersson, it was Aleksei Kolosov that just took the Flyers out of this game. 

To be fair to Kolosov, the first goal was an impossible shot to stop, and really the result of terrible defensive zone coverage from the Flyers in front of him. Just 43 seconds after Konecny’s goal, Artemi Panarin responded for the Rangers. On a broken rush of sorts, the Flyers (specifically Sanheim/York) lost Panarin, and Trocheck was able to find him wide open for a goal. Just brutal coverage from the Flyers. 

On the next one, Kolosov simply had to have it. An unscreened point shot should pretty much never go in, and that’s exactly what happened when Kolosov was beaten by Mika Zibanejad. In order to win hockey games, a goalie has to be able to make these saves consistently. The Flyers just have no shot with their goalies regularly doing this.

And finally, the Rangers third goal was not an easy one for Kolosov to stop again. You would like a big stop from your goaltender, but when a team scores on a 3-on-1, it’s hard to place a ton of blame on the goaltender. Brennan Othmann scored the third goal for the Rangers, as Kolosov allowed his third goal on three Rangers shots. Ersson immediately came in to relieve Kolosov after that. 

Abols goes down 

Just six minutes into the game, the Flyers suffered another injury. Rodrigo Abols was in a board battle in the offensive zone, and his skate got caught along the boards in a strange way and it was quite unforgiving on his ankle. It was a pretty gruesome looking injury, and Abols did not return to the game. 

Hopefully, Abols’s injury is not as serious as it looked, particularly with the Olympics coming up. Abols is set to represent Team Latvia in just a few weeks, so we really hope this turns out to be minor. In addition, an injury to Abols means the Flyers will be down their fourth line center, and there’s not really a solid replacement for him on this roster right now. We’ll have to see how this plays out.

Penalty kill update 

The Flyers penalty kill is on an incredible cold streak. We’re getting back to Ian Laperriere levels on the penalty kill units right now. They’ve been operating at just over 50% since the New Year, and that’s so bad it’s almost hard to believe. Today, they stayed pretty consistent, allowing one power play goal on three Rangers opportunities. They just keep allowing really high-danger cross-ice passes on the power play, which is exactly what you don’t want. Sometimes it happens with players like Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad, but the degree to which the Flyers penalty kill has allowed those types of passes has been so high in the last few weeks. Prior to the start of this game, the Flyers penalty kill fell all the way down to 22nd in the league. At this rate, the penalty kill is well on its way to joining the Flyers power play at 32nd in the NHL. 

Somehow, the Flyers did manage to score a shorthanded goal on the Rangers third power play opportunity. Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim executed a textbook 2-on-1, and made the game 6-2 Rangers on Sanheim’s sixth of the year. The goal was also the Flyers’ third shorthanded goal of the season. 

A new low? 

In case you’ve missed it, the New York Rangers have been a mess all season (really dating back to last year). Even with Mike Sullivan at the helm, the Rangers haven’t been able to play consistently well all season, to the point where they’ve effectively punted on the season. Yesterday, Rangers GM Chris Drury released another letter to the fans that essentially signaled that the Rangers would sell at the deadline, and start their “retool” on the fly. Trading expiring contracts like star Artemi Panarin is on the table, among other things.

So, you’d think that a Rangers team in that state of mind would be poised to mentally implode and be a mess on the ice. You’d think the Flyers, even though they’d lost five in a row coming into today, had the perfect opportunity to get off the slide. Right? 

Instead, we were witness to the worst loss of the season so far. The Flyers are playing at such a low level right now, and in all facets. Extremely bad goaltending, very poor defensive structure, scuffling special teams, and inconsistent 5-on-5 play. There’s not many teams they’d beat right now, not even a Rangers team that’s been effectively quit on by their front office.

Up next, the schedule only gets tougher for the Flyers. They head out west for three games against Vegas, Utah, and Colorado. Then, in the leadup to the Olympic break, the schedule goes: Islanders, Blue Jackets, Bruins, Kings, Capitals, Senators. Not an easy schedule by any means, and if nothing changes, we could be looking at quite the poor stretch for the Orange and Black. 

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