After spiraling in two consecutive games against the Bolts, the Flyers continued to throw away their playoff chances in Buffalo last night. As Jamie Drysdale made his return, the Flyers continued to play physically with no power play to defend it, give up too many chances, and attempt to combat key injuries.
Despite some respectable goals from Buffalo in the first, the Flyers started by showing great improvement from their previous two appearances. One thing that did not improve, however, was their powerplay showing. Going into the night, the Flyers had recently been 2-for-23 on the powerplay, and they kicked things off early by wasting a powerplay after Sabres’ goalie Luukkonen hooked Christian Dvorak. After they failed to generate any chances in their first powerplay, their overall time and space distribution really favored Philadelphia throughout the first half of the period, a big change from both faceoffs with the Bolts. Yet the tone shifted when Cam York went off for cross-checking at 9:16, giving Rasmus Dahlin a perfect opportunity from the slot, giving the Sabres a 1-0 lead. After a takeaway from Zegras by Josh Doan, Mattias Samuelsson was set up by Noah Ostlund to give the Sabres an unanswered 2-0 lead in the first. Konecny and Zegras had a 2-on-0 chance late in the period, yet never got on the same page and were unable to finish.
Dan Vladar did not return for the final two periods after exiting the game with an injury. He made three saves on five shots in the first period.
After an early penalty kill for the Flyers following a hooking call against Trevor Zegras, Buffalo grew the lead 3-0. Jack Quinn was able to get one by Sam Ersson while the Flyers’ defenders seemingly watched the play develop. This seemed to be a wake-up call for the Flyers, who only allowed Buffalo to generate 9 shots through the rest of the game. The upward motion continued as the Flyers dominated possession, with Cates securing a turnover and feeding it to Tippett for Tippett’s 15th goal of the season and 6th in the last 12 games. Buffalo responded just minutes later after Konecny went off for tripping, advancing Buffalo to a 4-1 lead. The Flyers finished the period by warding off serious chances for Buffalo, yet also failing to generate chances for themselves.
After a day of media drama surrounding Matvei Michkov, he was moved up to play alongside Dvorak and Konecny, replacing Trevor Zegras, who later made use of one of the Flyers’ 5 powerplays by deflecting Konecny’s shot to get the Flyers within a 2-goal reach. Yet after this, neither teams really generated any chances throughout the third. The Flyers could have pulled it together for a fighting chance, yet they were offensively lacking throughout the whole game. Buffalo was able to score shorthanded late in the period on an empty netter as the Flyers pulled Ersson for the final 3 minutes of play.
The Flyers simply didn’t make the chances and they haven’t been making the chances, something that needs to change throughout these injuries if they want to find their way back into a playoff spot, as they now sit 5th in the wildcard. They face the #4 spot in the wildcard tonight on the road in Pittsburgh as Bobby Brink moves to IR and Aleksei Kolosov gets his second start of the year and first since November 2nd. Kolosov has a .908 SV% in 19 games with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, looking to keep similar momentum for tonight’s game against the Penguins.
Philly's Next Shift 