Three reasons the Flyers lost to the Bruins

The Flyers lost to the Bruins on Thursday night, 5-4, in a shootout. Or, as coach Alain Vigneault calls it, “a skills competition.”

They also lost Mark Friedman, two days after not having Phil Myers for the final two periods. These injuries to the defensemen are pushing minutes to the guys who are left standing, particularly the top pairing of Ivan Provorov (career-high 30 minutes, 46 seconds) and Travis Sanheim (25:18, fifth highest of his career).

The Flyers stretched an ignominious streak of zero wins in regulation in Boston to 13 games, a skid that goes back to Oct. 6, 2011, when Ilya Bryzgalov beat Tim Thomas.

Here are three reasons for why that is:

Boston dominated the first five minutes of the third period, wiping out a 2-0 deficit and putting the Flyers on notice that they had woken up from their three-game slumber. Jack Studnicka’s goal 57 seconds in was the first of his career (five games) and the first for the Bruins this season at even strength. Yeah, they miss David Pastrnak, who will be out a few more weeks after offseason hip surgery.

The Flyers eventually joined the fight, getting helped by a fluky Travis Sanheim goal, and did well to force overtime when Jake Voracek found James van Riemsdyk for his second goal of the game with 3:32 to go. It’s not often a team can give up four goals and 22 shots in the final period and still escape with a point, so the Flyers can consider themselves lucky.

“We gave the puck away too much in the third, instead of just keep playing our game,” said Voracek, who had three assists and was the Flyers’ best player on Thursday. “I think the last two games we skated very well and battled really hard. A lot of positives out of our game, but we should have had two points, obviously.”

The Bruins’ third goal came on a power play after a bad cross-check penalty by Scott Laughton on Boston defenseman Jakub Zboril in the offensive zone. Boston scored 18 seconds later. Laughton was forechecking, but got a little too exuberant. Gotta know the time, place and score as Coatsey always preaches.

Laughton had a chance at redemption, but his breakaway in the waning seconds of overtime was stopped by Boston goalie Tuukka Rask, who was terrific in the extra session and stopped Voracek, Travis Konecny, and Claude Giroux in the shootout.

We’ll give Carter Hart a B+ for the night. He gave up four goals, but had way too much work. The Flyers gave up 43 more shots and are allowing 37.4 per game, second worst in the league by a hair to New Jersey (37.5). The Flyers expected the Bruins to come out firing Thursday night, but the Bruins’ holding a 70-47 advantage in shot attempts (shots on goal + shots blocked + shots missed) is a fair indicator of which team controlled play the longest.

“That team hadn’t scored a 5-on-5 goal, so they had that big shooting mentality, shoot from everywhere,” Vigneault said. “Create scrambles in front of our net. They were effective at it. Give them credit.”