Power outage for Flyers in Game 7 loss
Lack of power play hurts Flyers in Game 7 loss to islanders
Alain Vigneault said he needed “a little bit of time to think this through” when asked what primarily went wrong Saturday night as the Flyers’ restarted season ended with a 4-0 loss to the New York Islanders in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Frankly, he doesn’t need his tablet to dig for clues.
The Flyers power play struck out twice more in Game 7, leaving it for dead at ZERO for 13 against the Islanders and 4-for-52 in this bubbly postseason. More than any other thing — even more than the way the Isles checked the Flyers into oblivion in Game 7 — that lack of power-play confidence undercut anything the Flyers tried to do offensively in the series.
“I think, especially in playoffs, it can change a series for sure,” said Sean Couturier, who despite a sprained knee ligament that kept him out of Game 6 gave it a go in the seventh game. “Special teams, PK and power play ... their special teams were a lot better than ours.
“It wasn’t good enough and probably played a big factor throughout the series.”
Carter Hart will look at this series down the road and try to forget it. But without him the Flyers
would have been blown out.
Just as they were blown out in this game.
“Playoff hockey is a different animal,” Hart said. “You have to come to play every night, you can’t take a night off. The bounces just didn’t go our way, and it sucks.”
The Flyers have enough dedicated veterans to have pulled a game or two out of the bag, and Hart made dozens of tough saves to keep them from expiring earlier. But the lack of offensive push and the pathetic power play in particular laid the groundwork for what was an almost completely one-sided series finale Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena.
Almost completely. “I really liked our first six minutes,” Vigneault said. But shortly after that, Scott Mayfield scored the first Islanders goal ... and it essentially was all Isles after that.
The Flyers committed way too many turnovers and simply had no answer for the Islanders’ forecheck. They never really had a chance to get back in the game, and in probably the most interesting portion of the postgame eulogy, Vigneault — who otherwise begged off answers until he had time to absorb the loss — gave a slight indication that changes would be in order before another training camp rolls around at the start of winter.
“Give credit where credit is due, the Islanders played outstanding,” Vigneault
said. “And for whatever reason, I’m going to need a little bit of time to think about it, and obviously watch the game at some point. But we weren’t good enough tonight, so that’s why we lost.
“At this time I’m not in the mindset to analyze our season. We just played Game 7, we were one win away from going to the Final Four, so my disappointment right now is at a very high end. ... I thought we could have won, we didn’t win. And there’s individuals in that team that I’m going to take a little bit of time to reflect on, and what needs to be done here moving forward.”
Individuals like Shayne Gostisbehere, who wound up a semi-healthy scratch the last six games and as a result took some gas out of whatever the Flyers’ power play had, might be given a long look in the “offseason.” Others from the core group, too.
But for now, another season has come and gone, and since the Flyers seemed in a rebuilding mode, going seven games deep in the second round of the playoffs after a pandemic pause doesn’t seem like such a bad ending.
Just try to tell that to the players and a distraught head coach.
“Right now it’s very frustrating,” captain Claude Giroux said. “We like our team. We like the pieces we have. Frustration’s high right now. We’re going in the right direction, but ... it’s one game. If we won this game, we go to the conference final. So we have to learn from this and move forward.”