VANCOUVER, British Columbia — For the third game in a row, speed forced sloppiness out of the Philadelphia Flyers, and they fell, 6-2, for their third-straight loss.
Through the first, Canucks beat the Flyers to loose pucks, intercepted their passes, and turned the Flyers rebounds the other way. While the Canucks’ execution wasn’t pristine, they still managed to control the pace of the first period.
Even so, the first period was an improvement over the Flyers’ last first period, against the Seattle Kraken. While they had little offensive zone time, they at least were getting shots on goal. After Anthony Beauvillier capitalized on a Travis Sanheim giveaway to score, Scott Laughton tied it on the Flyers’ eighth shot on goal.
The Flyers caught up to the pace but fell behind on the scoreboard in the second. Andrei Kuzmenko beat the Flyers with a backdoor goal scored on an almost-open net. Beauvillier then notched his second goal four seconds into the game’s first power play. The Flyers responded quickly on their own power play when Morgan Frost knocked in a loose puck.
In the third, the Flyers finally flipped momentum their way. But when the Canucks eventually gained control of the puck, Phillip Di Giuseppe scored on a loose puck under Carter Hart’s pad.
The Flyers pulled Hart in the final minutes and yielded two empty-net goals.
Can I have that puck?
After play stopped following Laughton’s goal, Braun chased down the officials to grab the puck. Laughton had scored by deflecting Braun’s shot. The point was his first of the season and his first since May 5, 2022.
This season, his production has been much lower. After re-signing with the Flyers, Braun found himself shifted to a seventh-defenseman role amid the Flyers’ youth movement. Since the turn of the year, he’s played just four games while 22-year-old Cam York has moved into a more prominent role. While Braun hadn’t scored a point, he’s contributed with his veteran presence and knowledge.
That’s why Tortorella decided to put Braun back in the lineup as a seventh defenseman. Scoring may have been unexpected, but Braun’s assist kept the game tied going into the second period despite a sloppy first.
Picking on the rookie
In his first NHL game, goalie Arturs Silovs finished with a lowly 0.815 save percentage. The 21-year-old had played just 46 AHL games before being called up to debut against the New York Rangers. He faced 27 shots and let in five goals.
So when the Flyers got a chance at him, they peppered him with as many goals as possible. Luckily for Silovs, the Flyers had difficulty getting into the offensive zone. Most of their shots were one-offs, with the rebounds quickly going the other way. But even with many of their shots limited to the perimeter, it was an improvement from their past game, when they put just one shot on goal in the first period. With a rookie in goal, it was a solid strategy for a team that couldn’t take control of the game.
But after 27 shots, Silovs had only let in two goals. And after eight more, he still stood strong, earning his first NHL win.
Cracking Konecny
After a close study of his own game over the last few months, Travis Konecny knows exactly what he looks like when shots are going in versus when bounces aren’t going his own way. As expected, the longer his scoring drought lasted, the more he started to drift to the perimeter. But after scoring two garbage time goals last game, both created by his effort to get to the dirty areas of the ice, he looked more like the Konecny of the 13-game scoring streak.
Konecny worked to funnel toward the net instead of away, and he didn’t hesitate to shoot when he had the puck on his stick. While none went in, he led the game in shots on goal with seven.
Konecny’s efforts also paid off in other ways. His breakaway shot on the penalty kill helped run out the clock on the Canucks’ second power play. And his own power play shot in the second helped set up Frost’s goal.
