Flyers get a frosty visit from fast Sabres
PHILADELPHIA » It couldn’t have been very comfortable for Morgan Frost, being tossed into the starting lineup just in time for the Flyers to lay their first egg of the season.
It couldn’t have been any easier to watch for any of Frost’s more experienced teammates, either, who even after two wins in their first three games have plenty of questions to answer.
Sam Reinhart and Curtis Lazar each scored two goals, usually because the Flyers had turned the puck over or blew a defensive assignment, and the Buffalo Sabres ran out to a 6-1 win Monday night at a Wells
Fargo Center happily devoid of fake crowd cheers.
There wasn’t much real cheer in the locker room, either, perhaps because the same teams get back at it in the same mostly empty building Tuesday night.
“If I’m a player or I’m part of the coaching staff, which I am, I’m embarrassed at the way we played tonight and I’m glad that we can get back at it tomorrow,” Flyers coach Alain Vigneault said. “I expect a much better game from us, much better execution and much harder to play against.”
Vigneault wasn’t entirely happy after the first two games of the season last week, despite the Flyers scoring a total of 11 goals in two home wins over the Penguins. He saw a bevy of weaknesses, especially on even-strength play, though he acknowledged a long layoff and just a week or so of camp practices with no exhibition games could do that to a team.
What he saw Monday, however, was almost complete failure at every turn. What has yet to be answered is whether that’s a major concern going forward or not.
“What I saw tonight was our decision-making with the puck wasn’t good enough and when it’s not good enough, obviously that feeds the other team’s transition,” Vigneault said. “They come at you and come at you hard and that’s what happened tonight. We need to be
better with the puck.”
While his teammates hadn’t played since a second-round playoff loss over the summer, Frost hadn’t played “a meaningful game” since the AHL Phantoms shut it down last March.
Yet here he was, trying to be a replacement for the Flyers’ best allaround player, Sean Couturier. He’s out at least two weeks with a rib cartilage tear.
For starters, 21-year-old rookie Frost had nothing to feel guilty for.
“For a guy that hadn’t played in I don’t know how long, for the most part he played a good game, played a smart game,” Vigneault said of Frost. “But obviously we can all play better and that’s what we’re going to do tomorrow.”
“It was nice to get back out there with the team,” Frost added, “but it definitely was not what we wanted.”
Indeed, this blowout loss wouldn’t be looked at as an anomaly as much as a continuation of the first two games against Pittsburgh. Yes, the Flyers won both. Yes, a few players Sunday opined that the first two games only proved to them that the club hadn’t played all that well in those two wins.
They weren’t exactly going to come up with rave self-reviews after this mess.
The Flyers might have
known they’d have trouble matching Buffalo’s speed, but which by the midpoint of the first period started to be revealed. Before long a backhander by Lazar made its way over goalie Carter Hart, then Buffalo’s uber-skilled top line of Reinhart, Taylor Hall and Jack Eichel started to exert itself at the start of the second period.
Reinhart scored on a power play off a Hall pass, then he converted off an Eichel assist and then Lazar scored again on a shot Hart didn’t seem to see. With the help of more than a couple of defensive miscues, Hart was unceremoniously yanked just 8:09 into the second, the Flyers down four.
They tried to get back up, occasionally pressuring Sabres goalie Carter Hutton, who shut down a few sporadic Flyers scoring attempts but spent much of the night seemingly enjoying the wide open Wells Fargo spaces.
“I need to be better,” Hart said. “It wasn’t our best game tonight for everyone. We just got outworked and I know I need to be better.”
It can get better fast, considering the Flyers won’t have any time to really dwell on how badly they played. That said, they have to play this same fast and skilled team again.
“Payback already tomorrow,” fourth-line winger Nic Aube-Kubel said. “It’s really nice that we can play tomorrow. We don’t have to stay on that loss for a while.”