Adding insult to GM vacancy, Flyers flop once again
PHILADELPHIA >> They fired the general manager, gave a somewhat stunning vote of confidence to the head coach, talked openly and honestly about accountability and demanded better efforts from the team.
Maybe next, Flyers bosses Paul Holmgren and Dave Scott can go down to the ice and play? Because most of the people they have playing for their team right now simply aren’t.
The latest chapter of Travesty on South Philly Ice was a thrilling one Tuesday night, a blown two-goal lead in the third period to what is probably the worst team in the Eastern Conference.
Then again, the Flyers are fighting for that title.
They fell 4-3 to the Ottawa Senators by allowing three goals in a space of 5 minutes, 29 seconds of crunch time. Brady Tkachuk scored the first two, then Matt Duchene finished them off with 2:59 left to play.
“We’re up 3-1 going into the third, we have full control of the game and we just give it away,” Jake Voracek said. “That doesn’t have anything to do with (outside) pressure. That’s a winnable game. We just give it away.
“As soon as they got that second goal we kind of got scared. You can’t do that. Every single team is going to jump on it and gain the momentum and that’s what they did. I mean, it’s only one goal. It’s a onegoal game. We’ve been in that situation many times. I still don’t know what happened. I can’t believe we lost that game.”
This crushing loss came one day after GM Ron Hextall was fired and head coach Dave Hakstol was patted on the back and told to carry on. Whatever he might have up his coaching sleeve that he hasn’t tried to this point, he’d better hurry up and unveil it.
Pats on the back in this league don’t mean a thing.
“There is no excuse there,” Hakstol said. “We had a job tonight to go out and get it done and we didn’t do that, so there is no excuse for other things. When it’s game night you focus on the things at hand and that’s the end of it.”
For two periods, as Voracek pointed out, the Flyers had been focused to shut down the Senators (10-12-3, 23 points) who had played the night before, losing 4-2 to a Rangers team which represents the only Flyers win in the last seven games. It was still going along swimmingly with rookie trier Anthony Stolarz in net.
Then all Flyers broke out. Stolarz lost sight of a puck that he said was “sitting on my pad,” then accidentally shrugged it to Tkachuk, who popped it in to bring the Senators to within 3-2 with 8:28 left in regulation.
That’s all it took. The East’s bottom-dwelling Flyers (10-12-2) simply came apart after that. To a veteran like Voracek, that’s frightening.
“We were fine the first 40 minutes. we were making simple plays,” he said. “When we had the puck we made a play out of it. As soon as you start whacking pucks standing still, that’s trouble, and I think that’s what we did in the third period. That’s why they just came and won. We just kind of just had the puck and gave it away.
“I think these are mistakes by a team that doesn’t have confidence, which we don’t have right now. There’s nobody to blame but us. We put ourselves in that position . ... It’s 3-1 against a team that played yesterday? No matter what kind of position you are in mentally, you have to find a way to win that game. We didn’t.”
Voracek’s allusion to the Flyers’ mental state had much to do with the unexpected firing of Hextall. But as a few players pointed out, that shouldn’t have impacted this game.
“We’re all professional,” Scott Laughton said. “You’ve got to come to work and can’t worry about all that outside stuff and what’s going on. You’ve got to focus on what you can do individually to help the team win and what happens, happens. It’s the nature of the business.
“We’ve got a good group of guys that care for each other, but it has to translate onto the ice. We’ve got to do something here before we dig ourselves too deep of a hole . ... We’ve got to clean it up quick, before it gets too late.”
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NOTES >> With goalies Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth still on the shelf and Alex Lyon either hurt or healthy but with the Phantoms either way, it was a rare chance for Stolarz. His last NHL start was in April of 2017. This one won’t be memorable. “I felt pretty good,” he said, “especially early on. In the second period I thought I kind of settled in there. Obviously not the result we want but for me I’m going to continue to build off this and keep moving forward.” ... Back in the fold for this game was fourth line winger Michael Raffl, out since Oct. 22 with a lower-body injury. Supposedly fully recovered, he played only 6:49 of ice time. But he was a plus-2, because he was all-but tied to the bench in the third period.