Flyers Fan Reaction (FFR4) Gm 41: PHI 3, BUF 6 – Triple-Doubled Up
Every day seems to present a new low for the Flyers, and this one was no exception. The Philadelphia Flyers lose, 6-3, to the Buffalo Sabres, who received two-goal performances from a trio of players (Jeff Skinner, Tage Thompson, and Peyton Krebs), while career minor-league journeyman significantly outplayed Martin Jones, who was yanked less than twenty minutes in after allowing four goals on eight shots.
For a brief moment in time, it looked like things might turn around for the Flyers. Not in the sense of turning their season around and setting up an epic second half to pull their sinking ship off the ocean floor, but at least some semblance of positivity. After all, as former Sabre Rasmus Ristolainen said before making his return to the franchise he spent his first eight NHL seasons for, “Like I told the guys last night, there’s no better place to turn this around than in Buffalo.”
It didn’t seem that way when Flyers went out and fell behind 1-0 off a defensive breakdown that yielded a wide-open chance for Jeff Skinner less than 90 seconds in. But other than that, the Flyers’ first fifteen minutes went pretty smoothly. They came in with a plan — fire at will on Michael Houser, a 29-year old making just his 6th NHL start — and were rewarded. Ristolainen snuck his second goal as a Flyer through Houser, one that had to feel good after Ristolainen became perhaps more synonymous with the Sabres’ failures to exit their rebuild in the late 2010s/early 2020s than anyone else. And less than 90 seconds later, the Flyers barrage of point shots turned into a 2-1 lead when Claude Giroux deflected in a point shot from Ivan Provorov.
But as they have so often this season, the game spiraled out of control almost too quickly to believe. In fairness to the Flyers, they didn’t exactly get a lot of help in this game. First, Zack MacEwen got called for a bit of a ticky-tack hooking penalty. The Sabres scored on the ensuing power-play, but Mike Yeo challenged, and it looked to be a wise one. The entry was very close, but the camera angle from the bench appeared to show the puck still touching the blue-line while Krebs was about an inch over the blue-line on the other side of the ice. But the officials deemed it not definitive enough to overturn, upholding the 2-2 tie and putting Buffalo back on the man-advantage.
Those breaks weren’t the Flyers’ fault. But the difference between a good team and a bad team is how they respond to moments like this. Good teams deal with bad bounces they can’t control and respond by playing well enough to turn the tide back in their favor. The Flyers, to put it kindly, did not do that. Yes, Thompson’s second power-play goal in 24 seconds should’ve been stopped by Jones. And Buffalo’s fourth goal, which came just 2:03 later, took an unlucky bounce off Peyton Krebs’ back. But neither of those shots should’ve even happened. The Flyers’ defense collapsed on itself, giving the Sabres far too much space in the worst possible areas. “Rush goals against at even-man situations seems to be a problem,” Mike Yeo said when asked about what went wrong. “Gap could’ve been better at certain times.
The result? Buffalo’s first four-goal period in over two years; and that same sinking feeling that has defined so much of the first half of the Flyers’ season. The Sabres were simply better than the Flyers in every area Saturday. They dominated the Flyers at 5-on-5, to the tune of a 62.21% expected goals mark (Buffalo’s third-best of the season), holding the Flyers to 1.03 expected goals; only their 0.69 (not nice) on Dec. 29 at Seattle, which still remains their most recent win, was lower. Buffalo won the special teams battle handily, as the Flyers’ power-play woes continued, save for a garbage-time goal by Giroux. Even goaltending, which has been the Flyers’ biggest strength this season, wasn’t good enough. After a string of games where the Flyers played fairly well only to draw the short straw, the 13-21-7 Sabres took it to them in nearly every facet.
“Lately things have been trending in the right direction,” Yeo tried to remind. “And tonight it wasn’t.”
A performance like this was the risk of not winning any of those games. Every sports team enters a game with an expectation of what it will take to win. For a team as down in the dumps as the Flyers are, the path to victory is perhaps longer than any other team in the league. Other teams are worse; the Flyers are “only” 26th in the league by points and 27th by points percentage; in fact, they’re actually ahead of the Sabres in both departments. They’re still on pace for twenty more points than the last-place Canadiens. But after playing legitimately well and still losing, the Flyers are gripping their sticks tighter than ever. It feels less like hockey and more like the red light, green light round in Squid Game; the Flyers have it entrenched in their minds that one small slip-up means everything falls apart.
“Like I said after the last game, I feel like we have to play a perfect game,” Claude Giroux confirmed. “Right now, we do make one mistake and feel it’s going to the back of the net.” Perhaps the only good news might be, as Yeo essentially said post-game, you can’t, or at least don’t want to “crush confidence that isn’t there”.
It was one step forward, one step back for the Flyers’ process. As frustrating as that is, it’s still light years ahead of Philadelphia’s injury situation. The team announced Friday that Joel Farabee will be out for 3-4 weeks due to a shoulder injury, which Yeo confirmed stems from the hit he appeared shaken up from on Tuesday. The Flyers called up Wade Allison as a result, whose goal-scoring ability and vibrant personality figured to be a decent antidote for Philadelphia’s latest crisis of confidence.
Only instead of getting to see Allison shine for a full 60 minutes (and he did look sharp early), Allison miss the entire third period with a lower-body injury. The extent of it isn’t known yet, but it’s reasonable to be worried given Allison’s lengthy injury history; he’s only played in eight pro games this year due to the separate ankle and elbow injuries. And top it all off, Zack MacEwen’s day also ended early with what appeared to be an ankle injury of his own, with the Flyers’ most physical forward gingerly making his way off the ice late in the third period.
When the final horn sounded, the Flyers exited with hardly more vigor than their injured teammate had a few minutes earlier. It’s easy to understand why. It isn’t easy to understand what it will take to change that. But something needs to; a lot does, in fact. For as bad as becoming the first NHL team ever to lose ten consecutive games twice in their first forty contests is, the Flyers’ true nadir may still be what’s to come. That seems almost impossible given how terrible everything has been so far; this is the Flyers’ worst first half since 2006-07 (11-26-4). But that’s been said countless times this season. You can only hear that things can’t get worse so many times before it becomes your default.
Lindies
Fierce competition as to which quote best defines the Flyers’ spiral between Yeo’s confidence quote, Giroux’s perfect game line, and Ristolainen laughing when asked about what went wrong on Buffalo’s fourth goal and saying, “Too many goals they scored, I can’t remember, sorry.” This certainly wasn’t the return Ristolainen was hoping for to Buffalo after being traded to the Flyers last summer. But he did receive recognition from the team that drafted him, and even some cheers after his goal was announced.
As was briefly mentioned above, Buffalo’s four-goal first period was the first time the Sabres have scored four goals in any period since Nov. 29, 2019, against Toronto. Their first-period barrage today snapped a 139-game gap between such frames.
The Sabres’ six goals were also a season-high. Since the 2020-21 season, Buffalo has scored six+ goals four times; three of them have come against the Flyers. One of those was Buffalo’s 6-1 win on Mar. 31 last season that snapped Buffalo’s infamous 18-game losing streak; the Sabres weren’t kind enough to return a similar favor for the Flyers’ skid this afternoon.
Before today, the Sabres’ last home win came back on Nov. 26 against the lowly Canadiens; they had been 0-7-2 at the KeyBank Center since. It was the longest active home losing streak in the NHL and just three games shy of tying their record for their longest home winless streak, set back in 1991.
This is the first game the Flyers have allowed multiple 5-on-4 power-play goals against since Dec. 6, Yeo’s first game as head coach. Philadelphia’s penalty kill has been one of the few respectable areas of their game this season; it entered Saturday at 79.3%, 17th in the NHL.
There are a lot of areas where you can see the lack of confidence in the Flyers’ game, but one player who always seems to reflect how well (or poor) the Flyers are playing is Ivan Provorov. When Provorov is confident, he’s jumping on the rush, holding pucks in the blue-line, and breaking the puck out decisively. His performance on Saturday, particularly early, was defined by hesitation and uncertainty.
The emotional appeals for the Flyers to break out of their massive downspin won’t let up for a little while. The last two games, of course, had special circumstances beyond opportunities for the Flyers’ misery to extend; Jake Voracek’s return to Philadelphia on Thursday, and Ristolainen’s first trip back to Buffalo today. The oft-mentioned iron man streak of Keith Yandle is about to reach its climax. Barring injury, COVID, or some other extenuating circumstances, Yandle will tie Doug Jarvis’ record of consecutive games played at 964 on Monday; then pass it the following night on Long Island.
The Flyers’ eleven-game losing streak is just their fourth in franchise history, and their first since they lost a franchise record (for now) 12 straight from Feb. 24 – March 16, 1999.
3 Stars
3rd: Jeff Skinner (BUF) – 2 Goals (15, 16), Assist (11), 3 Shots
2nd: Tage Thompson (BUF) – 2 Goals (13, 14), Assist (14), 4 Shots, 57% Face-Offs, 20:04 TOI
1st: Peyton Krebs (BUF) – 2 Goals (1, 2), 3 Shots
Next
PHI: 1/24, 7 PM vs. DAL (20-16-2, W2)
BUF: 1/25, 7 PM @ OTT (11-20-2, L2)
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All Advanced Stats are 5-on-5 unless otherwise stated and via Natural Stat Trick
