There's plenty that can be said about injuries, bad calls, and non-calls from last night's game 3 between the Flyers and the Penguins. True, it's hard to win without your two best defensemen, the guys who run your power play, control the breakouts on offense, and mark the opposing team's top offensive players. And regarding the work of the men in stripes, you can always look at weak calls that result in power play goals and say, "That was the difference maker."
But last night, none of those things were the deciding factors. The Flyers were simply outplayed by what increasingly looks to be a better team.
It might have been a different game with All-Star Kimmo Timonen and rising star Braydon Coburn logging big minutes instead of Jaroslav Modry (-6 in the playoffs) and Ryan Parent. It's hard to discount the impact of losing your two best blueliners. But defensive play wasn't the Flyers' most glaring weakness last night. They held the Pens to a modest 25 shots, and only two of Pittsburgh's goals were scored at even strength (one was an empty-netter). The blueliners did a pretty good job in the defensive zone last night, which may be lost when the scoreboard reads 4-1 at the final horn.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Philadelphia sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
The biggest problem in this game was again the turnovers. The Penguins ran an efficient trap that slowed the play down and confounded the Flyers' attempts to gain the zone and maintain it in the seemingly rare event they did. There were very few sustained attacks in the Penguins' zone; if the Flyers gained the line and were lucky enough to get a shot off, the Pens collapsed on it and cleared the rebound. True, the best trap busters on the Flyers team weren't in the lineup, but we need to get past that (while silently screaming "Why?" perhaps). The neutral zone woes have been a major problem all series, and we have to begrudgingly give credit to the Penguins and coach Michel Therrien for that efficiency.
It's damn near impossible to win a playoff game in which you only take 18 shots (and about 3 of them were just hard dump-ins that went on goal). Sure, it was frustrating to see how many calls the refs made early in last night's game. The whistles slowed the play down far worse than some light hooking would, and I increasingly feel like a dinosaur who wants just a little of that old NHL back, so players on both sides could play without worrying about every little stick contact. The Flyers may have been jobbed on a call or two, but at least from where I was sitting (as far away as possible), the Pens were down a man in the first period on a weak call too. Again, as a hockey fan, I just want to see both sides not get whistled for contact that has little-to-no impact on the play.
Much has already been made about the non-call on Sergei Gonchar when he poked the puck away from a streaking Mike Richards on yet another brilliant Richie Short-handed Special. In live action, it was tough to tell, because Richards ended up in the net, but the replays, in my opinion, showed a great all-puck play by Gonchar. It's the kind of call I'd have been livid over if it were called against the Flyers, and really, if you're counting on getting calls like that to win, you have no business being on the ice. Here's the play, in which there's some contact made to the skate, but nothing that affected the shot, in my opinion:
(By the way, Richards is playing like a man possessed on every shift.
He attacks the puck on the forecheck and finishes his hits cleanly and
effectively; this is the example the Flyers need to follow if they want
to win.)
News
Speaking of no business being on the ice... It pains me to say this, but Steve Downie just looks lost out there in this series, and he needs to be replaced by Patrick Thoresen on Thursday. Thoresen doesn't have the ability to be the impact player that Downie can, but he also hasn't coughed up two pucks in his own zone, resulting in third-period goals in consecutive games. We're big Downie fans, and not just because of his rough play, but he's not ready for playoff hockey yet. John Stevens had some blunt words for him after the game, and I'd be surprised to see him again in these playoffs.
It may sound like I'm throwing in the towel, but that's not my intention. The Flyers won four straight against Montreal to advance to this point, so it's certainly possible. However, they're not playing well enough to even win one game right now, and that's gotta change in a hurry on Thursday or they'll be underachieving at a different sport by the weekend. Trust me, I don't enjoy extolling the virtues of the Penguins. But they're outplaying the Flyers in this series, perhaps a little more with each game, and they're winning these contests as much as the Flyers are losing them, if not more.
The crowd was great again last night though, even when it looked like a loss was looming.