Flyers - Lightning Recap

Even though it was the ex-Flyers that struck early, it was the current Flyers that lost this game. Simon Gagne had two assists before two minutes had passed off the clock and Steve Downie added a third goal before the end of the first period. Steven Stamkos scored his league leading 39th goal in the third period to push the lead to four. 

It is hard to pick a Flyers that had a good night. Brian Boucher played well after coming into the game to start the second period, but the Flyers couldn't get a puck past Dwayne Roloson who recorded his second straight shutout. The rest of the Flyers appeared to want to extend their break an extra two days. There were a few shifts from the Hartnell-Briere-Leino and Zherdev-Giroux-Carter lines that showed promise, but they were few and far between. The Flyers had trouble all night getting the puck through the neutral zone, and once they did they had an even harder time maintaining possession in the offensive zone. It was this struggle for the blue line that cost the Flyers two early goals. The lightning capitalized off two turnovers, the first in the neutral zone and the second just over the blue line. The third period passed as the Lightning sat back with all five men playing defense for the majority of the period.

You have to give credit to the Lightning for coming out of the break ready to play. They dominated the the mjority of the game, even though they were out shot by the Flyers 38-22. The majority of the Flyers' shots came from bad angles. The Flyers earned four power plays but were unable to capitalize on any of them, mainly due to over passing the puck and a lack of traffic in front of Roloson. 

In my pre-game write up, I said that the Flyers had to stop the Stamkos-St. Louis line and not spend a lot of time in the penalty box. They did both of those, limiting Stamkos to one shot on goal, which he scored on, and only taking two minor penalties all night, which they killed off. I am sure there were some players who had good nights, but I didn't feel like looking for them. The team should get credit for holding Stamkos St. Louis quite for most of the night. 

Hopefully the Flyers will be ready to play on Thursday night when they host the Nashville Predators.