Flyers stomach OT loss, drop consecutive games for first time since Dec. 22-23

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A game in which they never played from behind, the Flyers fell to the Kings, 4-3, during overtime Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center.

John Tortorella's club is 1-7 in OT this season.

Kevin Fiala scored the winner for Los Angeles.

The Flyers had two great looks in overtime but were turned away by Kings netminder Pheonix Copley.

Tony DeAngelo was irate after there was no whistle on Copley, who may have gotten away with tripping the defenseman to spring the action the other way.

"It's a clear penalty," DeAngelo said. "It's not even a question about it."

Thought you were tripped?

"That's not a thought," DeAngelo said. "It's a fact. It is what it is."

James van Riemsdyk, Wade Allison and Rasmus Ristolainen scored the Flyers' goals.

Van Riemsdyk (one goal, one assist) and Ivan Provorov (two assists) finished with multi-point performances.

The Flyers (20-21-8) have dropped consecutive games for the first time since before the NHL-mandated holiday break (Dec. 22-23). They're 9-4-1 post-Christmas.

The Flyers went 1-0-1 in their two-game regular-season series with the Kings (27-17-6).

Los Angeles entered the night in third place of the Pacific Division.

• The Flyers have dropped their last two games despite scoring three goals in each of them. They're now 17-5-5 when they score three or more goals.

They need to tighten things up defensively again.

• Coming off of a 30-save win over the Red Wings three days ago, Carter Hart denied 34 of 38 shots from the Kings.

The 24-year-old was busy all night.

"The first 10 minutes of the game, I thought we were going to lose 10-nothing," Tortorella said. "They just looked so much faster than we were.

"And this is what I like about the team the past couple of nights — I think we found our game, started skating. Just like the other night, we come back being down 3-nothing, we just stayed with our game.

"I thought we played a good game. I thought we worked our ass off against a really good team. I thought we were going to score there at the end; he makes a great save and they go down and score. No [b----ing] about our game for me."

Copley stopped 28 of the Flyers' 31 shots.

• DeAngelo committed a turnover in the defensive zone that led to the Kings' game-tying goal with 1:24 minutes left in the second period.

Ristolainen had given the Flyers the lead eight minutes before when he cleaned up a bouncing puck in front.

The Flyers know DeAngelo's strengths are on the offensive side of the puck. He's going to be a high-risk passer, but they need him to be sharper and more decisive with the puck. Especially given they're really relying on him for his puck-moving abilities.

"I've got to make a better play, I didn't get the puck out of the zone," DeAngelo said. "I probably could have went up the wall. When you watch it over, you could do 20 different things. When you're supposed to move the puck the way I am, you've got to make the play, so there's really no excuse."

The 27-year-old blueliner was taken off the power play during the game, finished as a minus-3 and played 18:20 minutes.

As for the no-call in overtime, Tortorella didn't seem to have a problem with it.

"It’s no penalty, no penalty," the head coach said. "You've got to skate, you've got to get back. I don't think it’s a penalty."

• Tortorella's club committed six penalties in regulation, three of them tripping infractions.

The penalty kill finished 4 for 5.

The Flyers went 0 for 3 on the power play.

• Thanks to the markers from van Riemsdyk and Allison, the Flyers grabbed a pair of one-goal leads in the opening stanza.

But each time, they lost the advantage to Anze Kopitar. The two-time Selke Trophy winner scored goals on the power play and at even strength to make it a 2-2 game at first intermission.

Hart faced 14 shots in the opening 20 minutes.

Over the last two games, the Flyers have surrendered five goals in the first period.

• Allison has been such an effective third-liner. He forechecks, he hits and he's providing offense, too.

Since the calendar turned to 2023, the 25-year-old has put up seven points (four goals, three assists) and a plus-7 rating in 12 games.

"We did a lot of good things tonight," Allison said. "So we've got to take that into the next game and try to fix the things we didn't do well tonight."

• The Flyers head to St. Paul, Minnesota for a matchup Thursday with the Wild (8 p.m. ET/ESPN+, Hulu).

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