PHILADELPHIA – After Friday’s flurry of Flyers trades, a letdown of sorts against the Seattle Kraken was hardly unexpected on Saturday afternoon.
But few would have guessed the Philadelphia squad would unravel the way it did against a team with the fifth-worst record in the National Hockey League.
With scorers Scott Laughton and Andrei Kuzmenko sent packing, the Flyers looked a bit out of sorts and dropped a 4-1 decision at the Wells Fargo Center. The Flyers have dropped three straight games, all to start their season-high seven-game homestand.
The final couple minutes of the second period were a complete disaster for the home team.
Tied, 1-1, the Kraken went ahead with 1:03 to play while the teams played four-aside. Several Flyers, including Travis Konecny, watched as Matty Beniers simply waltzed out of the right corner and slid a shot past goaltender Sam Ersson.
It only got worse. Shortly after, the Flyers went on a power play but got scored upon again. This time, Chandler Stephenson intercepted a pass near the blue line, streaked in and sent a puck beyond Ersson’s reach with 21.3 seconds left to play in the period.
While teams usually insist they aren’t affected by trade deadline tension and the aftermath, that certainly looked like the case on Saturday.
“I don’t think we were sharp, we gave up too many odd-man rushes as the game went on,” said Owen Tippett, who scored the Flyers’ only goal. “We just didn’t get any momentum going after that.”
Whenever a bunch of new faces are in the lineup, the timing can be off a bit. The shorthanded goal certainly looked like an example of that.
“Any time you give up a goal late in a period (the Stephenson tally), it’s tough,” Tippett said. “Especially when you give up two there. It was ugly.”
Veterans Sean Couturier and Travis Sanheim said the team needs to move past this little crisis in a hurry. There are only 18 games left and the gap in the chase for a playoff spot is widening.
“Yesterday (Friday) was tough,” Sanheim admitted. “It (the trade deadline) is something we’ve struggled with the last couple games. It’s just frustrating right now. We have to work through this and we will work through it. We have the guys in here who know that we can play better. It’s up to us to step up here.”
Coach John Tortorella didn’t think his team played all that well. He also didn’t believe that the loss of Laughton and Kuzmenko had that big an impact on the game.
“We have to keep working at our game,” he said. “It’s going in the wrong direction. I don’t think that (trade losses) had an effect on today’s game. Everybody loved ‘Laughts.’ The guys are going to miss him. But when the players put the uniform on, I don’t think that comes into play. I don’t think we played that well. They were the better team. They played better than we did in all facets.”
The second period’s scoring started with Seattle’s Tye Kartye circling out from behind the Flyers’ net, using Jamie Drysdale as a screen and finding the net at 10:11.
Defenseman Brandon Montour scored on a point shot at 3:55 of the third period to make it 4-1 Seattle.
The Flyers couldn’t score on three power plays in the first period but they did get one at even strength.
With time running down, Tippett launched one of his patented rushes down the left side. As Tippett cut to the net, the puck appeared to deflect off at least once before sliding between goaltender Philipp Grubauer’s pads with 31.7 seconds left in the period.
>York scratched
The Flyers made defenseman Cam York a scratch. Coach John Tortorella recently called York’s play “inconsistent.” York was replaced by Emil Andrae, who was just called up from Lehigh Valley after Friday’s trade of veteran Erik Johnson to Colorado. Andrae was paired with Rasmus Ristolainen.
Also entering the lineup were forwards Rodrigo Abols and Olle Lycksell (also just recalled from the Phantoms), who filled the spots left by the trades of Laughton and Kuzmenko. Abols centered a line of Nick Deslauriers and Jakob Pelletier while left wing Lycksell was on a line with Ryan Poehling at center and Konecny at right wing.
>Short shots
The Flyers return to the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday afternoon when the New Jersey Devils stop by. The Devils recently took a big hit on their postseason hopes when star player Jack Hughes went down with a shoulder injury which required season-ending surgery. It’s a pretty good bet that Ivan Fedotov will start in goal for Philadelphia. The Flyers are 1-8-1 in the second half of back-to-backs. . .Matvei Michkov picked up an assist on Tippett’s goal, giving him 47 points, two off the NHL rookie scoring lead. . .Garnet Hathaway missed his fourth straight game with an upper-body injury suffered in the game at Pittsburgh on Feb. 27. . .Ersson played in his 100th NHL game. Drysdale played in his 199th. . .Seattle came into the game having lost four of its last five.
