Instant Reactions: Aleksei Kolosov solid, Flyers offense NONEXISTENT in loss to Flames

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The Philadelphia Flyers, hosting the league’s last place Calgary Flames, weren’t able to generate ANY OFFENSE.

Aleksei Kolosov was serviceable, and the penalty kill remained effective, but other than that the Flyers just did nothing and have now lost consecutive games in regulation for the first time this season.

There’s not much to say about a game in which the much-maligned Jonathan Huberdeau scores a couple of goals, but Rick Tocchet really needs to figure out how to jumpstart this stagnant offense. Matvei Michkov still only has 1 goal this season, Travis Konecny looks like he’s lost handling the puck, Owen Tippett has now failed to score in six straight, and Trevor Zegras’ point streak at home has now come to an end.

With Tyson Foerster missing tonight’s game and most likely at least one more, things aren’t trending in the right direction for Philly’s forwards.

First period

Nick Seeler gets the Flyers first solid chance, ringing a wrister off the post behind Dustin Wolf. Does anybody else feel like whenever a Philly D-man has the puck in the offensive zone, it’s Seels? Strong shot, though. Short side but caught iron. I just looked it up, that was Seeler’s 33rd shot attempt of the season, third among Philly D-men behind Travis Sanheim (36) and Jamie Drysdale (43).

Sean Couturier, in one of his first shifts after missing Saturday’s game as the result of a friendly-fire puck to the elbow on Thursday, takes a Cam York slapper directly to the knee in front of the Calgary net. Rough, but he’s also scored a hat trick on a torn MCL before, so I don’t worry about the Captain’s knees. He clearly doesn’t need them.

Noah Juulsen just blew a tire skating towards his own net with the puck, wiping out and leaving the puck in the slot for Calgary, but the Flames forechecker just kinda crashed into Aleksei Kolosov, and with the puck loose, the Flyers broke out. Kolosov shook it off and seems fine.

Calgary has controlled play a little too much for my liking. They also played last night, and traveled from Nashville. Shots are 6-3 in flavor of the Flames with 4:30 left in the first. Not a ton of chances either way, but I’ve come to expect the Flyers to look better against the team with the fewest wins (2), and worst points-percentage (.231) in the NHL. Feels like they need a big hit or a fight or just something to jumpstart the bench.

To be fair, we do have a lot of mismatched lines with Tyson Foerster out of the lineup, so hopefully it’s just a feeling-out process.

Travis Konecny spices things up, running over Nazem Kadri after a whistle blowing a Calgary entry offside. TK seemed to argue he didn’t hear the whistle, and/or Kadri embellished the hit, which he definitely didn’t see coming. Nothing really came of the scrum, and it looked like Joel Farabee grabbed and hugged a former teammate (didn’t see who) to say “hello.”

Bobby Brink gets caught defending with his stick, and the Flyers are headed to their 41st penalty kill of the season. Philadelphia has gone short-handed an average of 3.64 times per game, 6th most in the league. But luckily the Orange & Black’s PK has been excellent with a 90% success rate.

Christian Dvorak got a short-handed breakaway, but managed to shoot the puck wide of Wolf from between the hashmarks. Impressive, honestly.

With 2 seconds remaining in the period and 22 seconds left on Brink’s minor we’re going 4-on-4 after Rasmus Andersson gets called for hooking in the offensive zone. That’s 20 straight kills for the Flyers man-down unit.

Kolosov was solid in the first, stopping all 10 Flames shots. Not a lot of high-danger stuff, but he did make a pair of saves on the PK late in the period. Not much else really happened. Really hoping the boys hit the smelling salts hard before the 2nd. Calgary is 1-10-2 since their opening night shootout win over Edmonton, and this is the last of a 4-game road trip for them. The Flyers should absolutely win tonight.

Second period

Flyers have about 1:40 of power play time after the brief 4-on-4 ends, and they’re 4/14 (28.6%) over their last 4 games. Nothing doing on this opportunity though, and then the Flames come right down and score to go up 1-0. Jonathan Huberdeau zips a shot over Kolosov’s right shoulder as Travis Sanheim and a Flame pushing across Koly’s vision may have acted as a screen.

The Flyers came right back with a chance, with TK receiving a give-and-go to enter the zone, and with what appeared to be a clear shooting lane, passes back and to his left to a trailing Egor Zamula who Wolf denied with a snap glove save. I get wanting to make the goalie move, but let’s trust the shot that has scored 91 goals over the last 229 games.

Jamie Drysdale gets the Flyers a chance, flashing his speed on an end-to-end chance and while his initial shot, a backhander from the outside, wasn’t particularly dangerous, it ricocheted around in front and nearly snuck by Wolf. The Flyers have had a little bit of jump the last couple shifts. Maybe they can build towards sustained offensive pressure in the second half of the period.

Owen Tippett is going to the box for slashing with 6:40 left, and given what we’ve seen offensively from the Flyers so far, the PK needs to make it 21 straight if they want to have a chance to come back, and they do! Calgary had a couple chances but not too much. With 4 under minutes left the Flyers are trying to apply some pressure but their inability to string together accurate passes or fight through decently tight checking is keeping most of the play to the outside. This offense is just BLAH!

The period ends with the game still 1-0 bad guys. Philly is being outshot 17-9, and through 40 minutes not much has transpired. Just a very mediocre game all around. And I find that wildly disappointing because the Flames stink. My expectations aren’t sky-high for the Flyers, but they should look better against a truly bad team than they have.

Third Period

Zegras – Dvorak – Tippett start the period, so Rick Tocchet appears to have done some line-juggling at intermission.

AAAAAND the Flyers ice the puck 59 seconds into the 3rd. Great start!

Grebenkin – Cates – TK is an interesting combination. They get some zone time and then force an icing. That’s something, I guess.

4th line of Abols – Gaucher – Hathaway gets a puck on net and an OZ faceoff, and they remain on the ice. They lose the draw but Hathaway lays a big hit, it seemed like something might happen but no fireworks, disappointingly.

We’re six minutes into the third, the Flyers have finally applied some pressure, but somehow got all of one shot on Wolf after a few mad scrambles and blocks made for a few tense moments. Once again, this team just cannot get ANYTHING through. They’re “up to” 11 shots on goal.

Coots centering Michkov and Brink has been the best newly-made line of the third, but it’s a low bar right now.

WTF?!

The Flames make it 2-0 on what seemed like a fairly harmless floating wrister from the point by MacKenzie Weegar, but a deflection by Huberdeau in front doubled Calgary’s lead. Oof.

A GOAL! Travis Konecny lights the lamp off a Noah Cates faceoff win, and with 5:40 left the Flyers are 1 shot away from tying it after sucking for most of the night.

Tocchet pulls Kolosov with 1:45 left, and we got some around the perimeter puck movement that eventually got Coots a chance in the slot, but without any traffic Wolf swallowed it up. Timeout with 1:09 left in regulation.

With 2.7 seconds left the Flyers have an O-zone draw, and now after a time check it’s actually 3.4 seconds. Dvorak gets tied up, puck goes into the corner, Flyguys lose 2-1. This is a disappointing one. Philly got 9 SOG in the 3rd after totaling that in the first 40 minutes, and this team’s offense has quite a bit of work to do.

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