Ill-timed line changes and defensive pair switches are among the problems causing the Flyers' downfall this season.
Too often, they’ve resulted in breakaway goals.
In a lethargic game that lacked for excitement and entertainment, yet remained tightly defensive, that’s exactly how the Flyers lost Thursday night at Wells Fargo Center.
Two Flyer mistakes was all Ottawa needed in a 3-1 victory that further dimmed the Flyers' fading playoff hopes, though they remained seven points behind the eighth-seeded Rangers in the Eastern Conference.
“Just miscommunication,” Luke Schenn said. “That’s two breakdowns, two goals off the rush … To give that up at the end of the game, pretty much not being aware of who is around you. It backfired on us. It’s a bad goal to give up at a bad time.”
You rarely see a team ice the puck on the penalty kill, have a line change, then get beat cleanly on a breakaway. Worse, for the game winner.
“There was a line change and missed coverage,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “They had been bringing five guys back the entire night on their power-play breakouts.
“This last time they brought four back and one guy stretched. From the change, we missed him.”
That’s how Colin Greening broke a 1-1 tie at 14:24 of the third period with Claude Giroux sitting in the box serving a four-minute, high-sticking penalty.
“We had tried a different power-play breakout where we had put five guys back and I think they were used to that,” Greening said.
“So when they put me on instead of Gui (Guillaume Latendresse), I was the one that was kind of hanging back and trying to keep the defensemen back.
“Luckily, their defense kind of parted and I just saw an opening … and I was able to get a break.”
Ottawa’s first goal in the opening minutes of play saw the Flyers’ Bruno Gervais and Kimmo Timonen coming onto the ice on a late change as Zack Smith was streaking up the middle with no defensemen within a zip code of him.
“Not too sure what happened on those goals to be honest,” Giroux said. “The first one I just got off, so I wasn’t too sure.
“We’ve gotta make sure we make less mistakes and when it’s close like that, find a way to be better defensively for the whole 60 minutes and if you give the other team a chance to score.”
Did we mention the Senators had lost five straight much like the Winnipeg Jets last Saturday before they met the Flyers?
Following two straight losses that have seen the Flyers drift seven points behind a playoff spot, Laviolette re-arranged all four of his lines.
The biggest change saw Simon Gagne elevated to Giroux’s line with Jakub Voracek. Since his arrival, Gagne has demonstrated more jump in his skates than any other player and he’s 33, too.
Seven minutes after Smith’s breakaway, Gagne helped tie it by assisting on a Giroux shorthanded goal.
Gagne’s initial shot from the left circle was blocked. Gagne retrieved the puck in the high slot, spun around and shot again as Giroux redirected it on rookie goalie Robin Lehner.
It remained 1-1 going into the third period.
The Flyers began the third with a runover power play from the second period and did nothing. They quickly got another power play. Did nothing with that one, as well.
Incredibly, they came into play No. 2 overall on the power play in the NHL (22.9 percent). They are now 0 for 13 over their last five games.
“Yeah, we had some chances,” Giroux said. “We had some good chances. But sometimes it’s going to go in, sometimes it won’t. I think we were moving the puck well there, it just wasn’t going in.”
That is why all it takes these days for a Flyers' loss is a couple of miscues.
“There were two [breakaways] in the first period and in a game where you’re trying to stay alive, to give up breakaways doesn’t get the team going in the right direction,” Mike Knuble said.
“Our second time in the first period was a lot better than our first. They got one goal, but we’re lucky they didn’t get two or three by the time we tried to respond.”
The Flyers' urgency really didn’t kick in until the final period.
“It was a 1-1 game going into the third and our power play doesn’t capitalize, but theirs does,” Knuble said.
Indeed, the game was up for grabs.
“There is an opportunity to win,” Laviolette said. “I actually thought the third period was our best period. We generated the most offense.
“It was probably the tightest defensively we played that period and didn’t get the result we were looking for.”