Tough to be sellers if there are no takers
So the Flyers blew it again Sunday, and if you didn’t believe your eyes when it was happening, believe what you could have heard later from head coach Alain Vigneault.
“It’s hard to explain,” a seemingly somewhat dazed Alain said. “We had that game in total control. We were giving them almost nothing. We just blew it.”
Twice in fact. Blew a 2-0 lead early in a second period in which the Flyers weren’t ready to play. Then blew it in more classic fashion late in the third.
Scored a third goal to retake the lead early in the period, then flat out dominated before Sabres goalie Linus Ullmark suddenly awoke and somehow kept his team in the game. The Sabres, proud holders of the NHL’s worst record coming into the game and one of the three worst teams in the NHL in goals-allowed, could have, should have been down by two or three goals late in the game. Instead, thanks to their under-rated goaltender, it was still a 3-2 game with the clock ticking down toward the three-minute mark when 13year Flyers veteran and team captain Claude Giroux iced the puck for no apparent reason.
“The icing, we didn’t need to do,” Vigneault said. “And we lost the puck in our end in the
corner there when we had control, and they found a way to jump on one of their rebounds. We just couldn’t get it done.”
Giroux also couldn’t get the ensuing faceoff with Jeff Skinner done, losing it and then losing track of Skinner, who passed to an open Viktor Olofsson for a shot that sent Carter Hart scrambling. The play was finished by none other than Skinner, who rumbled toward the puck just when Giroux literally tumbled toward it, Skinner’s skate winning the race to score the puck.
At least it got a review, but yeah, that’s how socalled “goals in the dirty areas” are scored. You would have found the Flyers well down in the league rankings in that category if such a stat existed.
Mere seconds after that Skinner goal, reigning NHL Selke Trophy winner Sean Couturier appeared to have the puck in the defensive zone along the boards when he inexplicably lost it, then simply watched as the puck went out to the point to Buffalo’s Jacob Bryson. His sinker of a slapshot was kicked out by Hart but right at Rasmus Asplund, who planted the rebound for the winning goal with 2:38 left.
The Flyers, who had spent much of the third period giving Ullmark reason to flop skillfully around his crease, weren’t about to beat him after that, and after an empty net goal, the Sabres skated away with their 10th win of the season.
Tenth. That’s 10-25-6. And at 26 points, that’s still 18 shy of the Flyers (19-16-6-44), who almost tragi-comically are still close enough to tell themselves they have a chance at the postseason.
“We’ve got to play again on Tuesday; big game against Washington,” Hart pointed out. “For sure it’s tough, losing a game like that, in that fashion, (after) being up late in the game and then blowing a lead. But we have to get back at it Tuesday against a good hockey club.”
Yes, there’s always another big game against a good hockey club. For the Flyers, the odds seemed stacked against them this season when the NHL accurately located them in an East Division with the likes of the Capitals, Boston Bruins, New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins for a special 2021 COVID-only season realignment. Barring a miracle over the next three weeks, those four aforementioned teams will be your East playoff representatives.
The Flyers? They join the Rangers and Devils as East counterparts who somehow allowed the Sabres to go a combined 9-8-5 against them. They went 1-17-1 against the four soon-to-be East playoff teams, by the way.
So why, as Vigneault asked afterward, would it be hard to understand what happened in this game?
In other Sabres numerical gains, they moved down a ranking spot in both goals-against and goals-against per game; from a second-worst tie to third-worst at 142 goals allowed. Ditto second to third in allowing 3.46 goals per game.
That’s because of this win over the Flyers, your new solo second-place heroes in those two stat categories with 144 goals allowed and 3.51 goals allowed per game ... down a tad from the 2.77 they allowed last season.
Allowing better than three-and-a-half goals per game in this day and age?
Teams that do that at this point aren’t usually fighting for a playoff spot, they’re more likely denying charges of tanking for a better draft lottery spot.
Which brings us to the Monday afternoon NHL trade deadline. Hey Flyers ... SELLL!!!
“We’re certainly not looking at selling right now,” Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher said in a rare public Zoom interview back on March 24. “I have received very few calls. It’s been really quiet in terms of receiving calls. I’ve made many. I’ve been much more aggressive, I think, than a lot of people just looking at different options. There doesn’t seem to be many teams out there willing to take on dollars or term at this point in time.”
In other words, for at least nearly three weeks and probably longer, Fletcher has clearly been in a selling mood. But it doesn’t take a long look at the Flyers roster to know that what they’re selling people ain’t buying.
Not a Jake Voracek with three years left on contract with an AAV of $8.25 million. Not a Nolan Patrick who missed last season with migraine issues that in a lot of ways resembled concussion symptoms, and although he’s been healthy this season was recently demoted from checking line center to right wing because he wasn’t checking very well.
Certainly not Shayne Gostisbehere, who has rediscovered his long lost scoring touch but still makes blatant defensive mistakes. With two years at a $4.5 cap hit left, the Flyers couldn’t even lose him by waiving him.
They are tied into longterm pricey contracts with Kevin Hayes and James van Riemsdyk; are hoping Travis Konecny starts living up to his long deal, and are wondering if giving Phil Myers more than $2.5 mill for the next three seasons might have been a mistake. As it is, only pending unrestricted free agents Michael Raffl and Scott Laughton seem right for selling at a value price.
If not ... hey, maybe Fletcher could offer Brian Elliott the chance to be traded to any playoff team in need of a veteran backup goalie just to do him a favor.
At least they’d have that to feel good about before another early offseason.