The Flyers still can't beat the Rangers -- but they're getting so close

The conventional wisdom in hockey circles is that to beat the New York Rangers, a team has to avoid one major potential pitfall: getting into a track meet with them.

You can’t let Artemi Panarin race up and down the ice constantly with his world-class skill, the thinking goes. You can’t allow a high-flying Peter Laviolette-coached team trade transition chance for transition chance with you. You can’t permit a loaded top-six including Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafrenière to truly get rolling.

For nearly two full periods, the Flyers followed the universally-accepted “How to Beat the Rangers” book. It was a tight checking clinic, a carryover from their play against Boston and Florida over the weekend, when they allowed just 35 shots across the two games. And through 34 minutes against the Rangers, it was more of the same — New York were totally stifled and managed only 12 shots on goal. It was exactly how the Flyers wanted to play, and it led to a 2-0 lead.

Then, the Rangers started playing “their game.”

Building off a strong close to the second period that helped them cut the Flyers’ lead in half, the Rangers stormed out of the gate to start the third. Here was the high-octane club battling for a Presidents’ Trophy — the club that had defeated the Flyers six straight times entering Tuesday. By the time three minutes had passed in the final period of regulation, the Flyers’ 2-0 lead had turned into a 3-2 deficit, and the ultimate outcome appeared assured.

But the Flyers didn’t crack. And most notably, nor did they fruitlessly try to slow down a firing-on-all-cylinders Rangers club and aim to turn the game back into a tight-checking slog. Instead, they seemed to make a collective, unorthodox decision: Let’s try to beat the Rangers their way.

And they very nearly pulled it off.

“We didn’t want to get into a track meet, but once it opened up, it was a great display of mental toughness to stay with it and find ways to stay in it,” assistant coach Brad Shaw said after the game.

The result was one of the most entertaining periods not just of the Flyers’ season, but of the 2023-24 NHL season period, as the two clubs combined for a relentless goal-scoring barrage. Travis Konecny quickly tied the game on a 2-on-1 transition rush that really was a solo affair, given the fact that Konecny appeared to have no intention of ever passing up a shot. Then the Rangers’ Trocheck fired back with a shorthanded goal on a 2-on-1 rush of their own. Next, it was Morgan Frost who found Owen Tippett with a gorgeous pass to spring his speedy teammate for a breakaway and yet another tie score. Burgeoning star Lafrenière then ripped a puck past a startled Sam Ersson in the immediate wake of a blocked shot for his second unassisted goal of the night. And finally, Tyson Foerster took advantage of a chaotic loose puck scramble and tied the game for the Flyers for an rarely-seen third time in the period, ultimate sending the proceedings to overtime.

The Flyers, as it turned out, could actually match the Rangers in chance-for-chance firepower.

“Yeah, I think we’ve got the players here (who can do that),” Scott Laughton said after the game. “You see Tippett and TK, Frosty… those guys making plays and getting breakaways and 2-on-1s. We created enough, for sure.”

But despite all the entertainment value and offensive firepower and sheer chutzpah on display on the part of the plucky Flyers, they still lost. Which brings us to a low-key big problem facing Philadelphia, who very well could face this same team in Round 1 come April.

They just can’t find a way to beat the Rangers.

The Flyers are now 0-2-1 against New York this season, with the last two defeats nail-biting thrillers. They’ve now dropped seven straight to the Blueshirts, and haven’t beaten them in regulation since April 22, 2021 — nearly three years ago.

It’s not like they haven’t come close on multiple occasions. Two of their three losses this season have been by one-goal margins. Two of the three last season came in overtime. They’ve proven capable of slowing the Rangers’ speed for long stretches, and showed last night that they can even hang with that speed for extended stretches if truly necessary. Yet the Rangers remain the hurdle they can’t clear, the unscalable mountain. Why?

“Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. Wish I did,” Laughton responded. “But yeah, they’ve got some guys that make some good plays at key times. Guys that can move the puck. And they’ve got a really good goalie.”

Given the toss-up nature of at least four of the last six head-to-head matchups, is it really just a matter of getting the right bounce at the right time? Just one more play, one more big save, one more slick pass?

“I guess you could look at it as one more play, but when goals are going in like that, it’s really just kind of who has that last opportunity,” Owen Tippett said. “I think if we get that last opportunity, we capitalize on it and we win the game.”

In overtime, however, the Flyers’ best offensive players — the ones who drove the bus in the third period — never got the chance for that last opportunity.

To be clear: John Tortorella’s decision at the start of overtime to go with the checking duo of Ryan Poehling and Noah Cates wasn’t the singular reason the Flyers lost.

Ersson allowed six goals on 27 shots, and could have come up with a big, game-changing save at any moment in the third.

“Obviously, I know I’ve got to come up with a couple of saves,” he said after the defeat. “I’ve got to find a way to handle (periods like the third) better mentally, and just come up with those saves when the team needs it.”

The skaters could have avoided their lapse at the start of the third, which was reminiscent of another costly dip two weeks ago against Boston that also ended up leading to a 6-5 loss.

“Going into the third there with the lead, we felt pretty comfortable,” Laughton admitted. “We got one (standings point), but I thought we were in control of it, and should have got two.”

Or, any single skater could have made one more big offensive play — perhaps Joel Farabee, who was surprisingly quiet in this one, or Sean Couturier, who has yet to score a goal since returning from his two-game scratch last week, or even Konecny, who had another golden opportunity with just minutes remaining in regulation and the score tied and was unable to bury it.

But Tortorella doesn’t escape blame either.

Last Thursday, the Flyers lost in overtime to the Carolina Hurricanes, and all of Konecny, Frost and Tippett failed to see the ice. Why? In part because Tortorella chose to begin overtime with a forward duo of Ryan Poehling (11th on the team in points) and Tyson Foerster (eighth). It didn’t work — the duo was on its heels basically the entire shift, and Carolina potted the gamewinner on the second shift (forwards: Laughton and Farabee) just 88 seconds into the extra stanza.

So five nights later, in response to that overtime failure, did Tortorella adjust his strategy and kick off OT with his best scorers?

Nope. Tortorella sent Poehling out again, except this time with Noah Cates — an even less effective offensive player than Foerster — as Poehling’s support.

The result? This time the Flyers couldn’t even survive that first shift, as Adam Fox ripped a shot past Ersson and sent Philadelphia to yet another loss against their Metropolitan Division rivals.

So why did Tortorella go with such an on-the-face conservative overtime strategy? Just as in Carolina, Tortorella did not speak with the media after the game to answer for his choice, choosing instead to send out his assistant Shaw to explain the decision.

Shaw made the expected case as best he could: the Flyers are using Poehling to try and at least hold serve in the first shift of overtime against the opponent’s top scorers, and then take advantage of more favorable matchups in the following shifts.

“Poehls has been one of our best two-way players for the last probably two, three months. He’s got a chance to win the faceoff, plus he’s responsible at both ends of the rink,” Shaw contended.

“I think he’s the right guy to put out there,” Shaw continued. “They’ve got two of their best offensive guys and one of the best offensive defensemen in the league in (Adam) Fox out there as well. So we have guys that we feel are going to play both ends of the rink really well, and it didn’t work out.”

The problem, of course, is that it now the thinking hasn’t worked out twice in one week. And as a result, the Flyers missed the opportunity to pick up two more big points, and turn the result of their seven-game gauntlet — which concluded on Tuesday night — from “passable given the quality of competition” (2-3-2 record) into “legitimately impressive and statement-making” (4-3-0).

They were oh-so-close to doing the latter. But just as become the standard against the Rangers, they shot themselves in the foot with just enough missed opportunities and unforced mistakes to lead to a less-than-ideal outcome.

The Flyers know they can skate with the Rangers. They both outshot (41 – 29) and outchanced (14 – 6 by high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick) them on Tuesday, and controlled the pace of the majority of the game. In many ways, Tuesday should serve as a confidence booster for the club that they can, in theory, defeat New York in a playoff series next month.

But to do that, they’ll have to, you know, actually beat the Rangers in reality, even just one time. The Flyers will get one more shot on April 11 in a Madison Square Garden rematch, and maybe that time, they’ll avoid an early-third period dip.

Or get better goaltending.

Or not make conservative OT lineup decisions that blow up in their faces.

Against the Rangers — and despite all the good they did on Tuesday — it’s always something.

And until it’s not, that same conventional wisdom that the Flyers bucked when they instinctively decided to get into a track meet with a team that thrives at that pace will hold that they’re just not on New York’s level.

“We know what they’ve done as an organization the last few years. They’ve got a real good hockey team there,” Shaw said. “We’re concerned (with) where our organization is going. And we really like where it’s pointed.”

But at some point, regardless of the Flyers’ direction, they’re going to have to scale that mountain that is the New York Rangers and conquer it.

They just couldn’t do it last night. Again.