New coach, players tired of same old mistakes
NEWARK, N.J. >> Freshly displayed from the City By The Decay, another fall-apart performance by the Flyers Saturday.
Graced with the chance to simultaneously play their way out of the Eastern Conference and Metropolitan Division basements, the Flyers instead spent much of a matinee shooting wide of rookie Devils goalie Mackenzie Blackwood and spent too many moments putting their rookie goalie, Carter Hart, to the test.
Another Anatomy Season on the Stink.
“We shoot ourselves in the foot a lot and it makes you have to chase the game a lot of the time,” James van Riemsdyk said. “So that makes it tough. We did do some good things, but obviously made some key mistakes and they ended up in the back of our net.”
Call it a recurring theme for this season, with a solution that through trials, tribulations and changes at the management and coaching levels still eludes this most underachieving of NHL teams.
On this day, the mistakes-to-loss ratio was easy to see.
First, while down a goal and trying to ignite a dormant Flyers offense, Travis Sanheim tried to make an ill-advised pass across the ice in the neutral zone. which only served as a setup pass to spring the Devils’ skillful Nico Hischier the other way on a breakaway. The 2017 No. 1 overall pick had no problem picking a spot to beat Hart for a 2-0 New Jersey lead 5:08 into the second period.
“Obviously it’s a play of a I want back,” Sanheim said. “I’ve got to make a stronger play there. You give a skill guy like that a breakaway, he’s not going to miss too often.”
Then, after van Riemsdyk halved the lead late in the second to give his team some hope, seldom used Flyers defenseman Christian Folin gave the hope right back.
He tried to make a return pass to a teammate off the backboards behind the Flyer net rather than just clear the zone. That awry return was turned into a rebound goal seconds later by New Jersey’s Miles Wood at 1:18 of the third.
Considering the crumbling confidence and siphoned psyche of this Flyers team, that would be more than enough to settle the issue.
The Flyers did score once more — with two seconds left to play in what was every bit of a 3-2 loss that leaves them stuck in the basement.
But hey, the good times aren’t far away ... the June draft will be here before you know it.
“Yeah, it’s just frustrating,” Sanheim said. “You play well, your get your chances, and a couple of mistakes and they end up in the back of your net. I thought (Hart) played really well tonight and held us in, but like I said, a couple of mistakes ... and that second goal’s on me, for sure.”
Perhaps such errors wouldn’t hurt so much if they weren’t simply the latest in a recurring stream of boo-boos in a season so hard to digest.
Interim head coach Scott Gordon has only had to stomach 14 games of this, but the glaring errors haven’t eluded his eyes.
“I think there’s a lot of players that are playing the right way,” Gordon said after he fell to 4-8-2 as a Flyers coach. “But it doesn’t really matter how many are playing the right way if you’ve got two costly mistakes (like) that; you can’t outscore those two mistakes.
“For all the good one player, two players, 10 players, 15 players do, you have those types of mistakes that are self-inflicted. It wasn’t great plays by them that set them up to get the two goals, it was decisions by us that were poor decisions.”
As a result, this team of veteran core forwards and supposedly rising young talent is an almost baffling
16-23-6, their 38 points the second-lowest in the NHL, their minus-37 goal differential the worst in the league.
Poor preparation, lousy execution, chronic lack of concentration and ego-shattering losses of confidence have all contributed to this ongoing meltdown. And yet there are no easy answers.
Just easy descriptions of the same old mistakes that end up in one unforgiving place.
“I don’t know what to say,” defnseman Robert Hagg did say. “Right now we’re just finding ways to lose, and that’s how it feels.
Added Sanheim: “It’s weird. It seems to be at the wrong time. I’m not exactly sure why, but for some reason they always seem to end up in the back of our net.”
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NOTES >> Always injured goaltender Michal Neuvirth has been placed on Injured Reserve, backdated to Jan. 3. No one knows if and when he’ll return. And general manager Chuck Fletcher made himself unavailable to talk about such things before the game Saturday . ... Sean Couturier’s assist on James van Riemsdyk’s goal was good for Couturier’s 300th NHL point . ... Flyers, still hoping that this Devils loss was more of an aberration than the win Thursday over Dallas, will try again Monday night at home against the Minnesota Wild.