Mistakes doom Flyers as comeback comes up just short against Avalanche

PHILADELPHIA — For fifty minutes, Monday night’s game between the Colorado Avalanche and the Philadelphia Flyers went as most expected. The Stanley Cup contender was taking apart the self-declared rebuilding team, and would exit the City of Brotherly Love with an easy two points.

But after Owen Tippett ripped a distance shot past Justus Annunen with a little over eight minutes remaining to cut Colorado’s lead to 3-1, the Flyers made sure that nabbing a victory over the home team wouldn’t come without serious effort.

The Flyers nearly stormed back to tie the contest, with Tyson Foerster’s tally forcing the Avalanche to go into desperation defense mode during the final few minutes. In the end, however, they held on, taking down the Flyers by a 3-2 final score. Annunen got the win in goal for Colorado, while Cale Makar led the way with two second period goals. Aleksei Kolosov made 26 saves in defeat for Philadelphia.

Mistakes kill Flyers against elite foe

In his postgame interview, Travis Konecny brought up unprompted that it was his mistake which led directly to Cale Makar’s first goal — the one that gave the Avalanche a lead they would never relinquish.

Head coach John Tortorella was told of Konecny’s comments, and didn’t let his star forward off the hook.

“He should be (hard on himself),” Tortorella said. “It’s dumb. He just left the best player in the world to go chase the puck. If we’re gonna get over the hump, that can’t happen. Not from a guy that we’re depending on.”

Tortorella noted after the defeat that the Flyers were facing, in his own words, “an elite team,” and one that he strongly implied is significantly better on paper than his club. And perhaps accurate analysis of the game can stop there — the Flyers lost to a better team, a team built around quickness and skill that the home team just can’t match.

But there’s one problem with such a simplistic view of the game: after Tippett scored to cut the Avalanche’s lead to 3-1, the Flyers didn’t look outmatched by the supposedly superior Avalanche. In fact, for the final eight minutes, Philadelphia outskated and outskilled Colorado, and very nearly pushed the game into overtime, with Tippett coming inches from a tying goal that was only prevented by a desperation Sam Girard lunge.

So where was that the rest of the game? For Tortorella, it all goes back to those mistakes — like the one Konecny made.

“A lot of the game I liked, as we kept on going,” Tortorella admitted. “But goddamn we do stupid stuff. It’s so aggravating, the stuff that we do that should be out of our game. That’s what aggravates me.”

Tortorella specifically spoke on three such mistakes — Konecny’s breakdown, Tyson Foerster’s high-sticking penalty in the first period, and Bobby Brink’s high-sticking penalty in the third which nullified the second half of a four-minute power play opportunity. But there were others. The Flyers got forechecked to death by the Avalanche over the first 10 minutes of the game; at one point, Colorado had a 20-2 shot attempt edge at 5-on-5. There were defensive zone turnovers aplenty. There were botched odd-man rushes, missed shots, unnecessary penalties.

Yes, Colorado is better on paper than the Flyers. But the Flyers showed in the third period that if they avoid glaring errors, they have the makings of a club that can skate with even a team as accomplished as the Avalanche.

So in the final analysis of the game, when faced with the question of whether Monday’s outcome was the result of the talent gap or the mistakes, the only fair answer is yes.

Grans makes his debut

With Emil Andrae unable to play due a mid-body injury that he suffered on Saturday night — and both Cam York and Jamie Drysdale yet to be cleared for action — the Flyers needed to make a call-up from Lehigh Valley in order to dress six defensemen on Monday.

They didn’t go with Hunter McDonald, their most hyped blueliner in the minors. Nor did they bring back Adam Ginning, who already has 10 games of NHL experience. Instead, Flyers general manager Daniel Briere made the decision to give 22-year old Helge Grans his first taste of NHL action.

Grans was taken in the second round of the 2020 draft by the Los Angeles Kings, and then sent to the Flyers in the summer 2023 three-way trade that ended with Ivan Provorov in Columbus. Grans impressed at times in his debut season with the Phantoms, but battled injury and inconsistency, and never earned a call-up. This time, however, he was in position when an NHL need arose.

“I leave it up to Danny and (Phantoms head coach Ian Laperriere), and this is the one they sent us,” Tortorella said on Monday morning. “I know I’ve had reports (Ethan) Samson has played pretty well – some other guys have played well too, but we’re trying to figure out… with some guys, maybe one guy’s playing better than the other, but we don’t want to disrupt the process down there too. It depends on the individual, on what we think is best.”

McDonald in particular has turned his game up a notch in recent weeks, but the Flyers likely want to see him continue to make progress in the minors with his all-around game before racing him up to the NHL — after all, this is his first full professional season. The aforementioned Samson has also taken a step this season, but this is merely the start of what could prove to be a breakout campaign; they clearly want a larger sample size of success from him before giving him a call. As for Ginning, he struggled mightily in training camp, and appears to be well down the organizational depth chart at the moment.

In his first NHL action, Grans impressed. His best work came on a 4-on-4 opportunity, when he sent a large stretch pass up to Matvei Michkov and then supported the play, making himself an option for a Michkov pass and creating a quality scoring chance for himself. He scored his first NHL point (a secondary assist on Foerster’s goal) and avoided major mistakes while showcasing his mobility. By the third period, Tortorella was leaning on him heavily, giving him 11 shifts — tied for second on the defense with Rasmus Ristolainen and trailing only Travis Sanheim.

“He played good,” Tortorella said. “Didn’t look out of place.”

He did it with extra support in the arena, in the form of his parents, Morgan and Maria. No, they didn’t fly all the way from Sweden overnight to be there for Grans’ debut — they were already in North America for a yearly vacation, and got the lucky reward of getting to see their son play in his first NHL game.

“A little bit extra nice to have them here,” Grans noted. “They were already here on vacation, so it’s perfect timing.”

And perhaps it could be perfect timing for Grans, too. Egor Zamula missed the bulk of the third period with an apparent injury, and if he misses time, that could allow Grans to stay in the lineup even if one of York, Andrae or Drysdale is ready to go on Wednesday. Tortorella certainly spoke as if Grans wouldn’t be heading back to the AHL straight away.

“We’re gonna figure out who he is,” Tortorella said. “We don’t know him that well, but he played good.”

Kolosov holds his own

It wasn’t clear whether Aleksei Kolosov would get another opportunity in goal for the Philadelphia Flyers. Ivan Fedotov’s play has dramatically improved over his past three appearances, and Sam Ersson is the team’s unquestionable No. 1 goalie when healthy.

But Ersson isn’t healthy; he was placed on IR Monday with a re-aggravation of his injury from two weeks ago. That gave the Flyers an opportunity to give Kolosov one more look, rather than turn to Fedotov for his third start in five nights.

So Kolosov faced off against the Avalanche on Monday, and he was… fine. He did his best work in the first period, when the Flyers faced an early barrage yet still kept Colorado off the scoreboard. Kolosov’s glove hand — the most impressive aspect of his game in the preseason — was on display from the start, and he snared quite a few tough shots with it throughout the contest.

That said, Kolosov did ultimately allow three goals, and while none qualified as “bad goals,” it’s not like they were shots coming off tic-tac-toe passes leaving Kolosov zero chance to make the save. Goal No. 1 was a slot shot from Makar; the Avs’ second tally did redirect twice off Flyers’ skates but was low to the ice without much velocity; Goal No. 3 was a rebound that would have been difficult to keep out of the low slot but not impossible.

Allowing three goals on 29 shots to Colorado is no embarrassment. Kolosov very much looked the part of an NHL goalie on Monday night. But he also didn’t dominate to the degree that he should jump Fedotov, who has delivered three consecutive starts of similar quality. While Ersson remains out, Kolosov should stay in the mix. But I’m not convinced Kolosov did enough in this one to warrant the regaining of his NHL backup job.

Referee Mitch Dunning injured in freak play

The scariest incident of the night had little to do with the game on the ice. It was watching Mitch Dunning — an NHL official since 2019 — be stretchered off the ice after a collision with Colorado’s Josh Manson.

The collision occurred a little over six minutes into the first period. Dunning was watching the play — which had moved down low into the offensive zone — and came off the boards closer to the middle of the ice. Manson also was intently focused on the play, and didn’t see Dunning moving his his direction. The two crashed into each other, with Manson making contact with Dunning’s lower back in the process.

Dunning was unable to get to his feet, and the game was stopped for over seven minutes, as emergency crews worked to stabilize Dunning’s head and neck before placing him on a stretcher and wheeling him off the ice.

The freak accident sucked the energy out of the arena for most of the rest of the period. Fortunately, early reports from the NHL hint that Dunning avoided major injury, despite the frightening nature of the collision.

NHL games now include two referees and two linespeople, so the contest was able to continue with a three-person crew. Best wishes to Dunning for a speedy recovery.

Foerster making (sometimes painful) progress

Tyson Foerster’s night wasn’t an easy one. He made his fair share of mistakes — a bad penalty, a generally underwhelming first period — and he ended up nursing a bloody nose throughout the second half of the third.

But he also scored a goal for the second straight game, and just maybe might be starting to get his overall game in gear.

“I’ve been emphasizing my stick battles, and winning all the loose pucks in the d-zone, and I feel like I’ve been doing that a little better than I was,” Foerster said after the loss.

Tortorella seems to be liking what he’s seen — Foerster was back up to over 16 minutes of ice time on Monday after dropping down to 12 minutes against San Jose this time last week. He may still be on the fourth line at even strength, but Foerster is getting top power play time, and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before he creeps back up the Flyers’ lineup.

Tortorella has long been a fan of Foerster’s game — he’s looking for reasons to put him back in a prime role. Foerster is starting to give those to him.