Flyers’ work ethic reappears in loss to Canucks, but offense continues to elude them

VANCOUVER, B.C. — As the Flyers attempted to generate offense against the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday night, winger Travis Konecny grew increasingly familiar with the post and just about every part of Canucks goalie Arturs Silovs’ torso.

Silovs denied Konecny on a breakaway attempt by swatting the puck away with his right arm midway through the first period. Konecny hit iron with just 13 seconds remaining in the opening frame. Konecny led the team with eight scoring chances, according to Natural Stat Trick, but failed to capitalize on any of them. He clearly had some jump from his two-goal performance against the Seattle Kraken on Thursday that broke a 13-game drought without a goal, but he just couldn’t cash in, as the Flyers fell to the Canucks, 6-2.

“Just one of those nights where the puck’s sitting there and they’re getting lucky,” Konecny said. “We’re just hitting their skates. And I mean, open net, it’s just not going in.”

But for coach John Tortorella, the issue in Saturday night’s loss wasn’t with Konecny’s inability to score alone — it was the team’s failure to create offense as a whole. The Flyers actually had more scoring chances than the Canucks did, generating 33 opportunities to their opponents’ 22, according to Natural Stat Trick. But after the game, goalie Carter Hart expressed doubt in the quality of those chances.

Centers Scott Laughton and Morgan Frost chipped in the Flyers’ lone goals, one on a deflection and the other off a rebound. Those are the greasier types of goals that a Flyers roster lacking skill needs to continue to seek out to avoid extending their losing streak beyond four games. In February, the Flyers are 1-4-1, averaging just 1.83 goals per game. That average is a stark drop-off compared to their efforts in January, during which they averaged 3.14 goals per game (8-4-2).

The Flyers’ inability to score makes their mistakes in other phases of the game difficult to swallow. The Canucks’ first goal of the night, an Anthony Beauvillier tip, was a product of defenseman Travis Sanheim’s turnover off an attempted breakout. Their second goal, backdoor tap-in by winger Andrei Kuzmenko, came after a defensive breakdown that Sanheim took the blame for after the game.

Overall, Tortorella didn’t feel as if his team “gave them a bunch” of opportunities, but the mistakes the Flyers did make came back to bite them.

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“When you’re lacking some of the offense that we lack, every mistake is just that much ... it just stares at you,” Tortorella said. “Keep on trying, and trying to get other guys going and go about it [offensively].”

While the Flyers’ loss to the Canucks had an identical score to their Thursday defeat against the Kraken, the Flyers played two vastly different games in each. Two of those six Canucks goals were empty-netters. The Flyers were trailing by just a goal going into the third period before Hart’s failure to cover a loose puck allowed Canucks winger Phillip Di Giuseppe to punch it in to pull ahead, 4-2.

The Flyers stayed in the game for its majority because they rediscovered their work ethic, which seemingly did not get on the plane from Philadelphia to Seattle at the start of their four-game road trip. After a high-intensity practice filled with plenty of skating on Friday, the Flyers eventually got to their forechecking game toward the end of the first period and kept up the hard work in the ensuing periods.

But while the Flyers tied the score in the first period and pulled within a goal of another tie in the second, they still couldn’t create the offense they desperately needed.

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“We forechecked more tonight,” Tortorella said. “No one gives Seattle enough credit. That is a good hockey team. And they checked very well. The big thing for us tonight was that we tried to put an emphasis on making decisions through the neutral zone and giving ourselves a chance to forecheck. I thought we forechecked better, but we just don’t develop enough after that.”

Now, the Flyers are staring down two sets of back-to-back games this week, first against the Calgary Flames (26-19-11, fifth in the Pacific Division) on Monday followed by the Edmonton Oilers (30-19-7, fourth in the Pacific) on Tuesday.

But before worrying about their opponents, they’ll continue to work toward rediscovering their identity, which is rooted in a high work ethic and had just started to form in January.

Without it, the Flyers simply don’t have enough skill to keep up with the competition.