Four consecutive first-period penalties halt Flyers’ momentum in 2-1 loss to Senators
Matvei Michkov got the Flyers on the board in the second period after they spent 8 of 20 first-period minutes on the penalty kill.
OTTAWA, Ontario ― The Flyers played the best game of their young season so far. It still wasn’t enough for their first win of the season.
“The compete was there,” head coach Rick Tocchet said. “Guys really worked hard.”
The Flyers got off to their best start at five-on-five of the year, before a series of four consecutive penalties killed their first period momentum. Nick Cousins snuck the Senators’ only goal in the slim strip of time between the first two penalties, but you wouldn’t have known the Flyers spent 8 of 20 minutes on the penalty kill based on the shot totals.
In the first period, the Flyers had more shots on goal (11-8), more scoring chances (5-4) and more high danger chances (2-1) than Ottawa. That’s in spite of taking four penalties and having just one power play.
» READ MORE: Newcomer Michael Bunting ready to ‘play my game,’ as Rick Tocchet shuffles his lines for Ottawa
Initially, it looked like it would be more of the same from the Flyers on the man-advantage, after Tyson Foerster fumbled the puck after a faceoff win and let it slide past him out of the zone.
But they quickly reset, and cycled the puck with relative ease around the zone, and Trevor Zegras wound up with a wrister on Linus Ullmark. The Ottawa goaltender made what looked like an easy initial save, but Matvei Michkov kept at it, and cleaned up the rebound in the crease which slipped right through Ullmark’s pads to tie the game at 1-1 in the second period.
After that power play, the Flyers continued to apply pressure, nearly doubling the Senators up on shots midway through the second, before a late Ottawa surge closed the gap.
“We thought we had a good first period other than the penalties, we killed half the period, but we still got ten, eleven shots,” Sean Couturier said. “Five-on-five, we knew we were playing good. We played a good game, we just didn’t find that extra opportunity that we needed, and they did.”
On their third-period power play, the Flyers once again strung together passes and got a few good looks on Ullmark. Without a traditional center on the Flyers’ top unit, Michkov was in at the faceoff dot, and won four of his seven draws.
After the Senators got called for a puck-over-glass penalty, earning the Flyers thirty seconds of a five-on-three, they had a massive chance to break through again.
But Ottawa forward Shane Pinto broke up what could have been two great scoring chances, and the Flyers proceeded to allow multiple dangerous shorthanded rushes. Then, late in the third, the Senators finally capitalized on a power play opportunity of their own, as Carter Yakemchuk broke the tie with a wrister from the blue line off a Claude Giroux give-and-go.
“That five-on-three is probably where we need to get one. I take responsibility for that, maybe not having us as ready as possible,” Zegras said. “It’s those moments that win or lose you games.”
The Flyers managed just three shots in the third period until the final three minutes, and ultimately did not score with the net empty.
Up next
The Flyers travel to Boston to face the Bruins on Saturday (1 p.m., NBCSP).
