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Tag: samuel ersson

  • Sam Ersson is the goalie the Flyers ‘want to play in front of’

    Sam Ersson is the goalie the Flyers ‘want to play in front of’

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    Sam Ersson’s career so far has been trial by fire, as much as the Flyers have tried to avoid that. 

    Last season, he was the only goalie head coach John Tortorella could reliably keep calling on, because Carter Hart was gone to face sexual assault charges, and the next options behind him just couldn’t keep up. 

    But Ersson kept answering the call, trying to keep the Flyers alive in the playoff race, even when he was completely exhausted, and Tortorella knew as much. 

    And this season, he’s right back in net doing it all again, trying to backstop the Flyers through their early struggles. 

    On Tuesday night in Boston, the 25-year old netminder made 25 saves to help push the Flyers to a 2-0 shutout of the Bruins. Then on Thursday night, coming back home to South Philly and the Wells Fargo Center to face St. Louis, he stopped 20 of 21 Blues shots to get his team to two straight wins for the first time this year. 

    The Flyers have been playing with much better, more defensive-minded structure over the past couple of games in the way of tight checking and plenty of blocked shots, but Ersson has given them the extra security to try and re-establish that until they could finally start seeing some results.

    His numbers don’t look considerably pretty at face value – an .897 save percentage and a 2.72 goals-against average through seven starts – but make no mistake, he’s been huge for them. 

    “You know he’s going to show up for every game,” defenseman Nick Seeler said of Ersson after Thursday night’s 2-1 win over the Blues. “And that he’s gonna make some huge saves for us and keep us in every game. That’s a goalie you want to play in front of.”

    And a goalie that can make life just a bit easier, even when other things aren’t going right. 

    The Flyers have their issues right now. Defensive play is starting to turn around, but steady goal scoring has been tough to come by, and the backup goalie situation is an open book, with Aleksei Kolosov getting the current shot at it after Ivan Fedotov stumbled out of the gate. 

    Ersson, in his first year knowing he was going to be the No. 1 goaltender, has been one of the few consistencies so far, and maybe the most valuable one of all for the Flyers…

    Because already, Tortorella has been back to calling his number again and again. 

    And again and again, he’s been giving the Flyers at least a chance.

    “We’re gonna try to do it the right way with him here in a long season,” Tortorella said postgame Thursday, calling back to last year’s overuse of Ersson. “But I think from camp on, I think he has played really well.” 

    The upcoming schedule through November is working in the Flyers’ favor a bit in that respect. There won’t be any back-to-backs until the end of month, which will offer a few breathers, though granted, they still do need to find out about their backup situation along the way as well. 

    “But I’m not afraid to ride him,” Tortorella continued about Ersson. “It just depends on how much action he’s getting in the games. A lot of things come into play as we go from game to game.” 

    Ersson is still ready to answer the call though, and arguably better equipped to do so now than he was last year amidst the Flyers’ seemingly endless run of goaltending chaos. 

    He’ll go in, and he’ll give them a chance. 

    “I think for me, it’s kind of finding a way, knowing I gotta shut out – like, take my mind off things when I’m away from the rink to kind of rest up mentally,” Ersson said from the Flyers’ locker room after Thursday’s win of his readiness to take on more starts. “It’s a long season, you know? So I know it’s gonna have its ups and downs. It’s gonna be tough sometimes. You just kind of gotta find a way to run through it.”

    Bobby Brink scored to give the Flyers the lead back late in the third period on Thursday night, but they were hardly in the clear.

    The final seconds were ticking down. The Blues had the puck down in the Philadelphia zone. The extra attacker was out for St. Louis, and they were pressing to tie it.

    Blues defenseman Justin Faulk, with space up top, slid a pass through to Brayden Schenn, who had a clean look at the net after four Flyers got caught looking at the puck and drifted too far toward it. 

    Schenn redirected a tip straight to the net as soon as the pass hit his stick blade, but Ersson stayed square with the puck and absorbed it into his pads as skaters in either jersey piled up into the crease scrambling after it. 

    He held on long enough for the whistle, and soon after, so did the Flyers for the win. 

    “I kind of picked it up at the last second there,” Ersson said. “I think the puck maybe almost went through, but [Travis Sanheim] came in there behind me, so that’s the small details to kind of give us results.”

    “I mean, we’re force-feeding him,” Tortorella said of Ersson’s overall career trajectory. “He’s not supposed to be in this position right now in his career. We were supposed to develop him, so a lot of things are coming at him pretty quickly.”

    But he keeps answering the call.

    MORE: Matvei Michkov got benched for the first time, but it’s not the end of the world

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  • Flyers outlast Devils, 1-0, keep playoff hopes alive

    Flyers outlast Devils, 1-0, keep playoff hopes alive

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    The Philadelphia Flyers are still alive. 

    Travis Konecny took off and scored shorthanded as they recaptured their magic on the penalty kill and he claimed his 400th career NHL point. Sam Ersson, on a second wind, stood tall in net for the second straight game to notch a 20-save shutout, and his teammates – with a little luck and tons of shot-blocking – did enough in front of him to steer the chaos away to until the final horn to beat the New Jersey Devils, 1-0.

    There’s one game left now, the odds are still slim, and the Flyers’ fate is in others’ hands as they await the Capitals on Tuesday night for their regular season finale. 

    But they’re still alive. That snowball is still flying through hell. 

    “We played to get our game to Tuesday to mean something, so that’s all we have to be concerned about,” head coach John Tortorella said.

    The Flyers’ play in the first period matched that of a team still with a chance, carrying over from Thursday night’s shot in the arm against the Rangers up in New York. 

    They carried and cycled the puck, gradually picked up in jamming the Devils through the neutral zone, and heavily controlled the tempo in select spots. But despite a few good looks and decent chances, they left the opening frame with nothing to show for it, and with a few close calls that nearly bit them had Ersson not stepped up for the big save or had the defense in front of him not have been able to navigate the scrambles in front to clear away the puck. 

    It happened early on when Nico Hischier had a clear lane to the net after both Flyers defensemen drew to the puck carrier and let it slip right through across the ice to the New Jersey captain. Ersson cut the angle down, made the initial stop, and when the puck trickled through from underneath his pads, Erik Johnson had luckily recovered enough to be there to send it away to the boards. 

    Then, late into the period, Flyers back-checkers clung to Dawson Mercer carrying the puck down along the boards, which left Timo Meier all alone peeling off the wall and toward the net on a drop pass. Ersson fought the shot off with his pads and out of play for a break. 

    Offensively, the Flyers had a major opportunity when the Devils gifted them a 5-on-3 advantage midway through the first. 

    After Nick Seeler delivered a hard, clean check along the boards to force play the other way, he was tripped up by Erik Haula on the way back up to send the Flyers on the power play. Then, as the Philadelphia was cycling and looking for an opening – much to the growing impatience of the crowd – the puck went into the corner and the stick of Devils defenseman Brenden Smith caught Noah Cates in the face while trying to clear it out.

    The Devils were down two for just over a minute, which could’ve set them back in a big way early, but the Flyers’ power play remains the team’s major Achilles heel. They cycled, possessed, another Devil was even skating without a stick at one point. It all went nowhere, again, and the Flyers had to hold the line coming off of another wasted two minutes. 

    But they generated one more before the period was up. A drop pass from Owen Tippett looping back from within the Flyers’ own zone sent Travis Sahnheim streaking along the boards and back behind the Devils’ net, and when the puck slipped out in front, Bobby Brink was there and circling along the crease with it looking for the opening. Goalie Kaapo Kahkonen didn’t give him one, but that didn’t stop Brink from trying to jam it through, even to the ire of Hischier and Jonas Siegenthaler, who all exchanged words and shoves along the boards after the whistle. 

    “We were fine with, honestly,” defenseman Erik Johnson said of the scoreless first. “It was low event. For us, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when we’ve been struggling to really score outside of the Ranger game before that.

    “So we were fine with it. We were OK with the game we were playing, and they didn’t have a ton of chances…It’s the type of game we wanted to play and had to play to give ourselves a chance.”

    The back and forth carried into the second, but the Devils looked to have caught a break when Cam Atkinson was tagged for a hold midway through. Instead, the Flyers found a way back to a part of their game that, at one point in the season, there was no one else better than. 

    Nick Seeler took a swat at the puck between the circles in their own zone and it found its way over to the stick of Scott Laughton across the blue line. Konecny saw it and was off to the races, springing past everyone as Laughton chipped a feed over to send him straight to the net. 

    Konecny was all alone and the shot had Kahkonen beat. 1-0, Flyers, a crucial swing in momentum, and on the back of a penalty kill unit that they needed to wreak havoc again. 

    “Well, I think the biggest part was [Seeler] thought Laughts was gonna get it,” Johnson, who was paired with Seeler on the PK, said of the sequence postgame. “Laughts took off and Seels was like ‘Ohhh god, I better get this or they might get a chance.’ So me and Seels thought Laughty was gonna get it, but he took off reading the play and then Seels was right there and made a good play. TK and Laughts finished it off, but to get a shorty and get the momentum in our favor, especially to score first, it was big for us.”

    “That play could blow up on us,” added Tortorella. “A backhand through the middle of the ice to TK going down, it gets through, but if it doesn’t, it could be in the back of our net. But [associate coach Brad Shaw] runs it that way. He wants them to go for it. They’ve had a connection with this all year long, and TK’s a guy that there were some struggles with him prior to these couple of games. He’s played so well to give us a chance here. And that’s one guy we talk about learning to play in these games. He certainly has taken a huge step in trying to help us stay alive.”

    But they were far from in the clear. 

    The score held going into the third, chances kept exchanging, but then. Konecy got another jump flying up the wall with tons of space and time. He tried to cut in toward the net, but New Jersey’s Kevin Bahl held him down to break up the scoring threat, giving the Flyers the gift and the curse of another man advantage. 

    Tippett nearly broke everything open, skating straight through everyone on an end-to-end rush, but once he was free for the shot, he sailed it wide, knowing he had it right there with a frustrated shout skating back to the bench for a change. The Flyers maintained control of the puck, but again, the power play went nowhere. 

    They had to cling on to that 1-0 lead, and did absolutely everything in their power to as New Jersey continually pressed with the clock ticking. They sold out on blocked shots, Sean Couturier won some critical defensive zone faceoffs late, Ersson had to keep hanging in there in goal, and when the Devils pulled Kahkonen with just over two minutes left, they buckled down to keep a grip on the puck and steer New Jersey clear just long enough for them to run out of time. 

    And to keep the Flyers’ faint, but still breathing, playoff hopes alive.

    “This stretch that we had probably came at the worst time,” Laughton said. “Couldn’t pick up a couple extra points there, which would’ve been huge at this time, but we’re not looking back. We’re looking forward. We continue to compete and guys are playing for each other – we have all year. We’re gonna try and get in here. Huge game coming up…

    “Little bit of scoreboard watching, too.”

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  • Five thoughts: Flyers get a crucial win over the Sharks behind strong effort from Sam Ersson

    Five thoughts: Flyers get a crucial win over the Sharks behind strong effort from Sam Ersson

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    With the playoff race the tightest it’s been all season and head coach John Tortorella watching from elsewhere while serving a two-game suspension, the Flyers took two points they had to have from the San Jose Sharks in a 3-2 win Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center. 

    The effort took until down to the final horn once again, but the Flyers improved to 34-24-8 for a 76 points that will keep them at third in the Metro, though with a tough stretch coming up for a banged-up group starting Thursday night with the high-powered Toronto Maple Leafs right back here at home.

    Until then, here are five thoughts from Tuesday night’s win…

    Tape-to-tape

    Early on, San Jose’s Marc-Edouard Vlasic tried to force a puck to the Flyers’ net, but it went straight to Morgan Frost’s stick instead, who with a spin and a prayer, stretched a pass from all the way across center ice to a Joel Farabee breaking free. 

    Frost connected. Farabee was all alone on the breakaway, and after a quick move to freeze goaltender Magnus Chrona. It was 1-0, Flyers. 

    The tally was Farabee’s 19th on the season, but only his first in four games and second in the last 19. Likewise, Frost’s assist was his first in five games after posting back-to-back two-point nights against Tampa Bay and then Washington going on a couple of weeks ago. 

    For the Flyers to succeed, both of these guys need to be going – Frost as an offensive, playmaking force, and Farabee as an instinctual two-way threat who can punish opponents for every mistake with the puck. 

    But neither really were entering Tuesday night, which has reflected in the team’s uneven results since coming back from Stadium Series just shy of a month ago – coupled with the injuries, of course. 

    Tortorella lamented Frost’s recent inconsistencies all over the ice in particular after Monday’s practice, which hasn’t been the first time. But to Frost’s credit, he responded with the play to spring Farabee, and then with what’s become a rare power-play goal for the Flyers off of a blocked shot that bounced perfectly to him from across the San Jose crease. 

    “I thought he played pretty good,” associate coach Rocky Thompson, who handled postgame media duties in place of the suspended Tortorella, said of Frost’s performance. “And I thought because it was such a special teams kind of thing, it was hard to get the flow. Like he didn’t play a ton of minutes tonight, but I thought he took advantage of the minutes that he did get to play.”

    Frost skated 11:43 for the night, 3:43 on the power play, and his two-point effort saw him finish plus-1.

    Hopefully, Tuesday night is a spark that gets both Frost and Farabee going because…

    Offense needs to come from somewhere

    But the well has been pretty dry for a bit, and it wasn’t just those aforementioned two. 

    Sean Couturier hasn’t had a point since Feb. 25’s loss to Pittsburgh, Tyson Foerster has been scoreless in the four games since Mar. 2 against Ottawa, and it certainly didn’t help to be without Travis Konecny due to injury from the Chicago game on Feb. 21 up until this past weekend. 

    It isn’t for a lack of effort either, certainly not Tuesday night. The Flyers generated a number of dangerous opportunities that left Chrona flailing for the puck, but unlucky bounces, Sharks defenders doing well enough to collapse in on their net and clog up lanes, or the Flyers just firing wide constantly kept them from doing damage on the board.

    Take this scramble at the end of the second period:

    They did everything but score. 

    Owen Tippett was looking at a stretch of just a single goal in the 10 games since Stadium Series as well entering Tuesday night, but he snapped that emphatically in the third period when he put home a perfect cross-ice feed from Konecny to give the Flyers the lead back, 3-2.

    And like Frost and Farabee, Tippett needs to be finding the back of the net, too, for the Flyers to have a shot, which gets frustrating in stretches like this when they’re not – even when they’re clearly firing away as they were outshooting San Jose, 38-23, with 10 minutes left in the third.

    The chances went both ways though. The Sharks, as lowly as they are now post-trade deadline, got a decent amount of looks down in the Flyers’ zone on a defensive corps stretched thin, but Samuel Ersson delivered a strong bounce-back performance from Saturday night’s blowout in Tampa, making 27 of 29 saves with the help of a couple of fortunate bounces off the post, too. 

    “Let’s put it this way, in my head, there’s not even a thought when there’s something going to the net,” Thompson said of his belief in Ersson. “I have confidence, not that he’s going to make every save, but I don’t have the feeling like he’s not. He’s earned that respect, in my opinion, over the last couple of months here. He’s done a really good job.”

    Please mark No. 18

    But the Sharks did find cracks in the armor, or rather, Filip Zadina was just allowed to skate straight to the net unmarked twice, both times with the Flyers on the penalty kill and as a result of glaring defensive breakdowns.

    The first:

    Staal just got caught on the wrong side of the ice entirely. 

    The second:

    Just too slow of a shift from corner to corner between Cam York and Travis Sanheim. 

    They stung though, especially in a game the Flyers really needed two out of for the sake of the playoff race. But they survived. 

    By a toe

    But also, man, did this stop from Ersson with the game still tied in the third bail them out big time.

    Quite possibly saved the whole thing.

    “That’s the nice thing about being a goalie,” Ersson said postgame. “You get to impact the game in a big way. That’s what you want. You want to have those moments come at you, and you want to come up with the big save.”

    “He’s been a rock all year,” Frost said. “Everyone in the room has so much confidence in him, so never a doubt that he was gonna do that. He made some huge saves tonight.”

    Protect the middle

    And if they’re going to continue to in what’s looking like a tough stretch ahead starting with Toronto on Thursday night, they’re going to need all hands on deck – forwards, d-men, everyone – to try and put up their most complete defensive efforts of the season, which is way easier said than done given how banged up the defensive pairs are right now. 

    York and Sanheim are going to log heavy minutes (they logged 26:07 and 23:55 on Tuesday night, respectively), Egor Zamula and Ronnie Attard are going to have to step up in the biggest situations of their young NHL careers so far, and Staal and Erik Johnson, though seasoned vets, are at points in their careers where the situations they get put in have to be highly selective.

    It’s going to be a lot to take on, and Tortorella noted Monday that the forwards have to be mindful of that and help out as much as they can, which will likely, in turn, affect how much they can do the other way against some high-powered offensive teams coming up. 

    The Sharks got their looks Tuesday night, but the Flyers were able to somewhat get away with them. Against the Leafs, Bruins, and Hurricanes though, they won’t – not at this point in the season. 

    Ersson is obviously going to need his best, but the Flyers are also going to have to really tighten up in front of him in the dangerous areas, because if you give the teams coming up over these next couple of weeks any ground, they can and will hurt you.

    “We can only play one way,” Thompson said. “Whether we’re playing the Boston Bruins or we’re playing San Jose, we are good at our style of play, so there’s no easy nights for us. It doesn’t matter who we have, but when we can play that way, we give ourselves opportunities to be successful by the end of the night.”

    Uni thought

    The Sharks’ roads with the teal helmets are so sick.

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  • Five thoughts: Flyers thrash Jets, are remembering ‘how good they can be’

    Five thoughts: Flyers thrash Jets, are remembering ‘how good they can be’

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    Yeah, the Flyers really needed the All-Star break. 

    Following up Tuesday night’s big win over the Florida Panthers and making the return home, Philadelphia took off from the word go and had the visiting Winnipeg Jets out of time and out of options by Thursday night’s halfway point. 

    Tyson Foerster notched the opening tally, Travis Konecny registered a Gordie Howe hat trick, and Ryan Poehling sniped yet another shorthanded goal as the Flyers thrashed the Jets, 4-1, for their second straight victory and a season sweep of a pretty fierce Western Conference opponent.

    They’re 27-19-6 now, still third in the Metro division with 60 points, and appear back to playing some solid hockey. Well, for the most part. 

    Here are five thoughts from Thursday night’s effort…

    How good they can be

    Coming back from an All-Star break that they had already ridden a five-game losing streak into, the Flyers returned to the ice against Florida Tuesday night and looked completely flat. 

    They were passive and skating cautious. “Safe” was the word head coach John Tortorella would go on to use, but then they came out for the second period and it was like a switch flipped. They got aggressive, they controlled the puck, they committed to their checking away from it, and shut a good Panthers team down the rest of the way. 

    They looked like the team that absolutely dismantled the Dallas Stars a few weeks ago, and the team that for much of this season, has caught everyone off guard and put themselves into a playoff spot two-thirds of the way through.

    Then they kept it going right from puck drop Thursday night back at home against the Jets. 

    Poehling and Foerster flew down the ice to complete a one-time play just shy of four minutes in for the 1-0 lead – Foerster’s 10th goal of the season – checks got thrown by orange sweaters with purpose, and Winnipeg in general just spent the bulk of the opening frame pinned down in their own zone until Konecny and Morgan Frost broke the wall down themselves to make it 3-0. 

    The Flyers floored it on the gas. And the Jets, like the Panthers a couple of nights before, didn’t know what to do. 

    “I think for our athletes we need to get some sort of swagger back, some confidence, and they should feel really good about it,” Tortorella said after Tuesday night’s 2-1 win down in Florida. “I went in there after the second period and I said ‘Are you s****in’ me? That’s how we play! Do you understand how good we can be when we play that way?’ Hopefully they gained some confidence and just be consistent. The key for us is to try – in games, within the game and then game to game – is to sustain our personality. 

    “That’s our battle. It’s gonna be our battle all through here. We’re gonna keep working at it.”

    So far so good after Thursday night, though it’s worth noting too that Tortorella had markedly shorter answers in his postgame press conference following the Jets win and that Konecny noted that the last two periods – when the Flyers arguably let up a bit – needed to be improved on.

    “We made a point of coming at them right away and trying to get a lead,” Konecny said from the locker room. “I think we really need to – not even look back on the first period. We need to assess the last two and really make sure we stay on top of things.”

    Pionk poked the bear

    Or the beehive. Either way, Konecny made sure he regretted it. 

    Right after Foerster’s opening goal, Konecny had the puck in the offensive zone and chipped it away with the Jets’ Neal Pionk right in front of him and nowhere else to go. Pionk moved in for the check and threw his hands up high, catching Konecny’s face. 

    Konecny took exception, shoves were exchanged, and then the gloves flew off.

    Now, Konecny and Pionk don’t particularly stand out as fighters – as much of an agitator as Konecny can be – but they’ve been in a few before. Konecny had the edge in this one with a takedown that had the crowd roaring. 

    Then he really poured salt in the wound late in the period when he shot a loose puck off Pionk in front of the net and in. 

    “Just get it to the net,” Konecny said of what he was looking for in the sequence. “It was kinda rolling, I wanted to one-touch it to the far side. Lucky bounce.”

    To top it off: an assist on Frost’s goal from another scramble in front to complete the Gordie Howe hat trick before the first was even over. 

    An angry Travis Konecny is a dangerous Travis Konecny, and with the way this season has been going for him – he’s now up to 24 goals and 45 points for the year – he will make you pay. 

    Pionk found out quick.

    “I wasn’t trying to fight for any reason, it just kinda happened,” Konecny said. “I mean it is what it is. Maybe it sparked us, I’m not sure.”

    Another shorty

    Konecny got called for a hook early into the second period, and so came an opportunity for the Jets to try and get themselves back into this. 

    Then Ryan Poehling got the puck thanks to a major Winnpeg miscue off the defensive zone draw and it was off to the races. 

    Beautiful shot, the Flyers’ 11th shorthanded goal on the season – tying them for the league lead – and Poehling’s second for himself on the year. 

    The power play is still in the basement – 31st in the league entering Thursday night at 13.2 percent – but the Flyers’ penalty kill? The NHL’s second-best unit at an 85.4 percent success rate, and one that can and will punish you. 

    They did it again to the Jets Thursday night, which almost begs the question of who the man advantage is really for.

    Ersson’s net

    Samuel Ersson is the No. 1 goalie now. 

    Carter Hart has been effectively wiped from the team now that he’s confirmed to be facing a sexual assault charge tied to the 2018 Hockey Canada scandal. Officially, he’s still on his indefinite leave of absence, but his locker stall is gone at the Flyers’ training center in Voorhees, PHLY’s Charlie O’Connor noted earlier Thursday, and so is his nameplate within the locker room at the Wells Fargo Center. He has also been cut out of the team’s home intro video. 

    The matter is serious, highly sensitive, and one that hockey has to be a far secondary to.

    But the Flyers still have to go out and play, and they’re going to be counting on Ersson from here on out to take the bulk of the starts.

    He was stellar after the first goal allowed Tuesday night in Florida, and was big again Thursday night against Winnipeg with some major saves throughout – 28 in total – aside from Kyle Connor’s goal late.

    “Thank goodness we had him tonight,” Konecny said postgame. “I’m not sure if it was the lead that early that kind of shut us down, but if it wasn’t for him, I think they claw back in it there. We gotta fix that.”

    At this point, it seems pretty clear that the Flyers needed the All-Star break badly, but Ersson just as much.

    He’s looked much sharper compared to a couple of weeks ago when the gauntlet of the schedule the team had looked like it was catching up with everyone, and like a netminder now braced for carrying the workload the rest of the way. 

    “I think everybody maybe needed a little bit of a mental break from hockey,” Ersson said.

    There’s still a lot of season left, sure, and Cal Petersen is going to have to take a few starts down the stretch eventually. But hopefully, Ersson is back to the level of play that had earned him a 50-50 share of the starts by January, and that he can sustain it.

    “We knew how important this part of the season is,” Ersson added. “Everything steps up another notch. We have to do it as well if we want to be a part of the playoff picture.”

    Cates’ case

    Noah Cates had the secondary assist on Foerster’s opening goal with a quick touch pass along the defensive half boards that sprung Foerster and Poehling up the ice.

    It was a solid play that followed up his game-winning goal Tuesday night against the Panthers, and hopefully, it’s something that is building toward a much better home stretch for the two-way forward who has struggled with inconsistency this season. 

    Cates established himself as a regular NHLer last season thanks to being a dependable middle-bottom six center in the faceoff circle and relentless commitment to checking that eventually contributed to a good bit of offensive production too. 

    But this season, the results haven’t been the same. He wasn’t as effective on draws, he could only manage a single goal that came in late October, and a broken foot robbed him of some significant time, including all the time it took to get his feet fully back under him. 

    But coming back from the break, he has looked solid taking the wing on the third line with Poehling and Foerster, and just missed on a juicy scoring chance midway through the third to pile on Thursday night. 

    After Tuesday’s win against Florida, Cates acknowledged that he needed time and a bit of a mental reset from the All-Star break to wipe the slate clean. 

    Now the games are in playoff mode as he described it, and he wants to factor into the Flyers seeing this last push through.

    “I want to be a part of that,” Cates said. “I want to be a part of helping this team.” 

    Flyers prospects: Oliver Bonk, Denver Barkey are surging for London

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  • Flyers crushed by Bruins, take five-game skid into All-Star break

    Flyers crushed by Bruins, take five-game skid into All-Star break

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    The Flyers looked out of gas, out of sorts, and way out of their depth. 

    Already on a skid from a grueling stretch ahead of the All-Star Break, the best-in-the-East Boston Bruins came into the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday and put a painful bow on it, embarrassing the Flyers in a 6-2 blowout that was over by the first intermission. 

    That’ll make it five straight losses for Philadelphia to counterbalance the five-game win streak that had them looking like one of the best teams in the NHL only a week ago, and a 1-5-0 record in the six games in nine days stretch that consisted of some of the league’s fiercest juggernauts. 

    The Flyers have come a long way already, and have done so to many’s surprise, but these past few games have been a brutal reminder of just how far they’ve yet to go. 

    “I like our team,” head coach John Tortorella said postgame of his club now that it’s the end of January. “When we played Dallas, it’s probably the best game I’ve seen a team play under me in a number of years. We’ve lost ourselves a little bit here. 

    “I think we’ve lost confidence offensively, although I thought we generated some offense today. It’s how the league works sometimes. You have some good weeks and you have some struggles. We’re having some struggles now. We just gotta try to put our head down, see if we can solve some problems, and get better.”

    They’re already a lot better from what they were this time last year, and they’re still in the playoff picture heading into February even with the losing streak, but up against the league’s elite like Colorado, Tampa Bay, and then, of course, Boston – they don’t hold a candle to them. Not right now. 

    The experience isn’t there. The structure and discipline, though slowly but surely getting better, isn’t there yet either. And the game-changing, superstar-level talent in the way of a Nathan MacKinnon or a Nikita Kucherov or a David Pastrnak, it’s going to be a while before they have that, and it’s going to be a grind until then. 

    And with all due credit – a lot considering where the team has put itself at the outset of a clearly stated rebuild – the players have done well for the most part of staying with that grind and pulling off a good number of tough wins. 

    But it finally caught up to them this past week, and especially on Saturday with the Bruins looking faster, smarter, and far more talented. 

    The All-Star break, and the nine days off coming with it, couldn’t get here soon enough. 

    “I think we just gotta continue to do what we’re doing,” winger Travis Konecny, who has gone cold offensively of late, said. “Remind ourselves every day that we’ve put ourselves in a great spot as of where we are right now in the season and what we’ve done as far as in the standings.

    “No one believed in us that we’d be here. So maybe it’s a good time for a break. Regroup, get some energy, enjoy some time with your family and friends, and then get back here.”

    Pastrnak lit the lamp twice in the first period to reach 33 goals on the season, first with an uncontested snipe that he threaded right through the legs of Travis Sanheim and over the blocker of Samuel Ersson to the far side post and in, and then with a loose rebound put home after cycling out from behind the net. 

    Pavel Zacha retrieved the puck in the corner then slipped a cross-crease pass by everyone in orange to an unmarked Charlie McAvoy who snuck down low to complete the play, and Brandon Carlo threw a shot on from the point that deflected off the sticks of Nick Seeler and then teammate Danton Heinen in front to send the puck flying into the twine over the shoulder of Ersson. 

    The Flyer fell into a 4-0 hole all within the last six minutes of the opening frame, looking defensively lethargic on each surrendered tally, and leaving the ice to a chorus of boos from maybe the biggest crowd the arena has seen for a hockey game all season once the horn sound to signal the first intermission. 

    Ersson, who’s now getting his look as the No. 1 goaltender, gave up those four goals on just 14 shots and was pulled for Cal Petersen coming back out for the second. Going back to last Saturday against Colorado, when he checked in for a yanked Carter Hart, Ersson has gone 0-4-0 with 16 allowed goals after standing tall for much of November onward. 

    Old friend James van Riemsdyk cleaned up on another rebound soon after the switch to make it a 5-0 game, and aside from Tyson Foerster’s two goals late in the second and midway through the third, Boston pretty much cruised from there. 

    The Flyers, meanwhile, crumbled into aggravating penalties and defensive miscues that culminated in a final blunder from Sanheim that let Charlie Coyle score and pretty much summed up the entire day. 

    Yup.

    “It’ll be behind most of us within the hour here,” Konecny said. “Just forget it. Burn the tape and move on.”

    Konecny will travel to Toronto for the All-Star Game festivities next week, while the Flyers on the whole will get nine days off to process their recent struggles, rest, and reset – which will also hopefully be enough time to get Owen Tippett back healthy.

    They’ll return to play on February 6 in Florida. 

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    Nick Tricome

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