PHILADELPHIA \u2013 Should this season happen to end in an unfavorable way for the Flyers, an inability to sustain a modest winning streak might wind up near the top of the excuse list.<\/p>\n
The Flyers entered their game against Utah on Thursday night riding the crest of a three-game winning streak, which was tied for their longest of the season.<\/p>\n
Momentum, and a chance to stay in close pursuit of playoff-bound teams, seemed to be going the Flyers\u2019 way.<\/p>\n
Then, for some reason, the Flyers came out flat. And stayed that way. It wound up being a disappointing 3-0 loss at Xfinity Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n
The Flyers were without the services of leading scorer Travis Konecny and defenseman Nick Seeler but those absences couldn\u2019t be used as excuses. There just wasn\u2019t a whole lot of noise made by the Flyers who did suit up for this game.<\/p>\n
What little offense the Flyers did generate was handled by Mammoth goaltender Vitek Vanecek, who recorded his first shutout of the season.<\/p>\n
Maybe the pre-NHL trade deadline (Friday) had something to do with the Flyers\u2019 unsteady performance but the players weren\u2019t offering that as an excuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we played a good team game tonight,\u201d captain Sean Couturier offered after the game.<\/p>\n
With a chance to win a fourth straight game, was there a little bit of complacency?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we need to press for more shots,\u201d Couturier said. The Flyers finished with just 16 shots, tying a season-low (Ottawa, Feb. 5). \u201cI think we have to simplify our game, go to the net hard, drive the net hard. Get some bodies there. It almost feels like we\u2019re trying to play on the outside. I think if we simplify things, then things will open up. I think we\u2019re a little too content on playing on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Rick Tocchet went along with that assessment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those games where we didn\u2019t push back,\u201d Tocchet said. \u201cIt\u2019s tough to swallow. We got to regroup.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for any pre-NHL deadline jitters, Tocchet sort of pushed that aside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought we were prepared. Had a spirited practice [in the morning]. Honestly thought we were going to have a good game. We lost a lot of battles. There wasn\u2019t pressure when there were plays to be made. It just kind of snowballed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Travis Sanheim knows what is at stake in each of these games. To not be competitive was quite a letdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimply not hard enough,\u201d he said of his team\u2019s play. \u201cThey\u2019re a team that battles hard on the walls, make it tough on you. It\u2019s hard to win when you don\u2019t win those battles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanheim was reluctant to use the trade deadline as an excuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say, maybe for some guys I guess,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in the thick of it. Just trying to win every game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utah broke the game open in the second period with a pair of goals. The second one gave the Mammoth a two-goal lead and while the Flyers have been good at coming back from multi-goal deficits this season, this was too big a mountain to climb.<\/p>\n
The first Utah goal came on a power play, with Nick Schmaltz doing the honors from just below the circle at 1:38 with a shot past goalie Dan Vladar. That was the 41st time the Flyers have been scored upon first by an opponent this season.<\/p>\n
Goal No. 2 came at 8:03. Clayton Keller zipped behind Rasmus Ristolainen, broke in clean and sent a shot through Vladar\u2019s pads.<\/p>\n
A scoreless first period produced little in the way of scoring chances. Each team generated only four shots.<\/p>\n
The Flyers tried using two defensemen on a power play (Sanheim, Cam York) but even that did little to force the issue. Philadelphia began the night 29th in the NHL on the power play at 16.2%, which is actually a slight improvement over their standing with the man advantage over the past four years.<\/p>\n
Ristolainen knows this could have been his last game as a Philadelphia player.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are things you can\u2019t control,\u201d he said for what seemed like the double-digit time the past few days. \u201cI don\u2019t worry about things I can\u2019t control. I don\u2019t really think about stuff like that. Tomorrow we see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was obviously a big game for us, we wanted to sneak back in there. A tough one tonight. We might have gotten a little bit outworked, outbattled.\u201d<\/p>\n
800 for Ristolainen<\/p>\n
Ristolainen played in his 800th NHL game. He\u2019s the 20th Finnish player to reach that milestone. Ristolainen\u2019s 310 career points rank second among active defensemen from Finland. He is also fifth on the games-played list for all active Finnish skaters.<\/p>\n
Short shots<\/p>\n
The Flyers head to Pittsburgh on Saturday for a showdown with the Penguins. \u2026 Noah Cates went into the game leading the Flyers in plus-minus at plus-17. \u2026 Trevor Zegras has scored on 18 of 29 shootout attempts (62%). That\u2019s fourth all-time in the NHL. He trails only Petteri Nummelin (80%), Mason McTavish (69.2%) and Kirill Marchenko (64.3%). \u2026 The Flyers failed to break the 20 shots mark for the 10th time this season.<\/p>\n
Wayne Fish is a freelance writer. Follow his coverage at www.flyingfishhockey.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2013 Should this season happen to end in an unfavorable way for the Flyers, an inability to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5112],"tags":[1468,5,4,1467,56,5205,43,5095],"class_list":{"0":"post-488955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-flyers","8":"tag-flyers","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","13":"tag-philadelphiaflyers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116182021893309140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}