The Philadelphia Flyers crumbled under the slightest breeze of pressure Wednesday night as they succumbed to a late-game comeback by the Utah Mammoth and lost in overtime. Head coach Rick Tocchet wanted to see something happen in the game, though. Specifically, one of his players to take a punch in the mouth.
Fingers have been pointed at almost every single member of the organization, looking for someone to blame for the humiliating loss. Whether it is Garnet Hathaway on a breakaway for an empty-net goal to put the game away, being stripped of the puck and the Mammoth scoring seconds later; or just the general lack of carelessness that caused a 3-0 lead turn to a 4-2 lead then turn into a 5-4 overtime loss — lots of attempts to find reasons why the Flyers lost that game where being tossed around.
But the collapse sort of begins with one moment. The Flyers were holding a 4-2 lead with just over eight minutes left in the game and Mammoth center Jack McBain decided to take a run at defenseman Jamie Drysdale, banging him against the boards. It ended up being a little too aggressive for Noah Juulsen’s liking and the Flyers depth defenseman dropped the gloves.
Aside from McBain handing it to Juulsen (maybe it was foreshadowing of the Flyers being extremely embarrassed later that night), the Flyers defenseman also earned a two-minute minor roughing penalty to hand Utah a power play after this fight.
And of course, it just so happened that Barret Hayton scored on the ensuing man advantage and that gives the Mammoth just enough juice to end up scoring the equalizing goal minutes later, and you know the rest of the story.
Head coach Rick Tocchet spoke with the media after the heartbreaking loss and was asked specifically about Juulsen’s decision to fight McBain eventually leading to the Flyers’ collapse.
“No. Take a punch in the mouth,” Tocchet said. “I love Juulsen, but take a punch in the mouth, you got to win the game, or whatever. I don’t even know what happened. You can’t take a penalty there. And then the PK, you got to come out and block a shot and that’s where we sunk. Guenther is one of the best shooters in the league so obviously, we unraveled and we have to put the pieces back together.”
Yeah, that’s a way to put it.
Maybe Tocchet saying that he didn’t even know what happened should be the main point of this quote, but we will instead be focusing on the “wanting a player to take a punch in the mouth” part. Because it doesn’t really make sense. Juulsen was the aggressor in this instance and there wouldn’t have been any fight if it wasn’t for the Flyers defenseman wanting to stick up for his teammate. There would be no said punch to take in said mouth.
Or, maybe he is wanting the entire team to just take the hits and not need to retaliate in crucial situations. If Juulsen knew that Drysdale can just take the physical punishment and more important things, such as winning a hockey game that your team is slowly losing control of, then the Flyers would have almost certainly walked away from last night with a win.
Tocchet spoke more about the Flyers’ collapse.
“Yeah, I mean, obviously we had good parts of it, but that’s unacceptable what happened tonight. So, it’s really not much to say. We sunk in pressure situations, something that we’ve got to get out of this team, right? You got to rise to the occasion. You got to want to be out there in pressure situations. A couple of guys sunk in certain situations — that’s the bottom line, so we got to recover from it.”
Multiple Flyers are certainly to blame for this loss. It felt like the entire team was just laying down and decided the game was over well before the final whistle was even close to being blown. In the third period alone, the Mammoth had a 23-13 advantage in shot attempts and a 9-5 in shots that actually hit the net — it was clear that they were putting massive amounts of pressure on this team.
The Flyers just gave in to that pressure and now we’re sitting here after watching that happen as our most recent example of what this team can do. That’s fun.
