The Flyers played the Dallas Stars on the second half of their back-to-back tonight. Yesterday the Flyers had a 3rd period comeback to beat Carolina, one of the best teams in the NHL. Despite being a Stars and Philly fan, I was rooting for Philly in this one especially because it was Kevin Hayes‘s first game of the season. Aaaand despite those hopes, the Flyers lost 5-2 to the Stars. Let’s get into it.
Anton Khudobin was fucking fire tonight. In the first period alone, the Flyers were all over him. He stopped all 19 shots he faced. He was just all over them, nothing was getting past him. Luke Glendening got the Stars up 13:23 into the period. A bit later Travis Sanheim took a shot, the team thought it got past Dobby and into the net. But like I said, he was on his A-game, he stopped it in between his pads before it crossed the line so the goal was called back.
So we go into the second down by 1. Leaving the first with so many shots and no goals did seem to take the wind out of the Flyers’ sails a bit. They just didn’t have much pep in their step through the first half of the second. Roope Hintz (sans pigtails 😔) would put the Stars up 2-0 12 minutes into the middle frame. Then 4 minutes later James van Riemsdyk got a dirty goal from right in front of the net.
This should have been a big turning point for the Flyers. Just get shots to the net and do not give up on them, no matter what. I think if they were able to leave this period down one goal after that then the final frame would have been different. However, because this is the Flyers, they were scored on 26 seconds later by Tyler Seguin and we left the second period 3-1.
The third period was none kinder to the Flyers. Joe Pavelski gave the Stars a 3-1 lead from a power-play goal 2 and a half minutes into the period. The Flyers did get a power-play goal of their own though. Ivan Provorov gave us some big hope with this one:
I loved this one for a few reasons:
A: We never convert on the power play so WOWZA!
2: Kevin Hayes got the assist so that’s Pont Number One for the season, love to see it.
D: The Flyers looked so lively after they scored this one. It was the energy we needed from the jump and they gave me some hope going into the final minutes. Radek Faksa however shut that down with an empty-net goal to put the score 5-2 with just about 2 minutes remaining.
You’re not gonna win them all and the Flyers just didn’t have that spark tonight. Not to mention this was a back-to-back so they’re tired and traveling between games, that’s always rough. I’m not too mad about this loss.
Martin Jones did alright in net. He faced 30 shots, stopped 26 of them. Dallas is a strong team when they’re not crumbling in on themselves at random and when their top guys are hot, they’re a force to be reckoned with. All the goals weren’t all his fault and he kept some big shots out of the net. He did alright but I’m sure Carter Hart will be back for the next one.
Both Hayes and Ryan Ellis had assists in their return tonight. Ellis played almost 19 minutes too, Hayes had just under 15. It was great to see them both back out there and getting points in their returns.
The team has been playing pretty good so far. They have beat some of the best teams in the league, I’m not worried about the Flyers. It just wasn’t their night, now there are 2 days off before Calgary on Tuesday. The Flames are 7-3-4 this season and they’ll face the Senators tomorrow. A good old Tkachuk Bros Face-Off is probably in store before Calgary rolls into Philly. Like I’ve said 700 times in this blog, I’m not mad about this loss we simply just move onto Calgary.
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