Flyers takeaways: The good, the bad, and the ugly from a 4-1 loss to the Kraken

SEATTLE ― The Flyers have now played five times at Climate Pledge Arena and have skated away with one win.

And it wasn’t on Sunday. They lost 4-1 to the Seattle Kraken to kick start the annual Disney On Ice road trip.

The only time the Flyers did win — a 3-2 overtime victory — was Dec. 29, 2021. It was the Kraken’s first NHL season.

Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly from the loss.

Coach Rick Tocchet likes rolling four lines consistently, and why not when you have a fourth line of Nikita Grebenkin, Carl Grundström, and Rodrigo Ābols that is showing speed, strength, defensive acumen, and a scoring touch?

“Well, some speed and possession. They’re holding on to pucks, and they’re making plays, you know? And I think that’s important. You wear other teams down,” Tocchet said during his pregame availability about the fourth line

“I haven’t been afraid to use them in D-zone faceoffs. They’re getting their minutes, but they’re earning it too, right? If we have a little bit of a lull in our game — and I’ve started them, actually, in some games too — I see some excitement. I see excitement from the other guys when they see the fourth line doing well. It’s really infectious.”

The line has been together for three games and almost 27 minutes at five-on-five, but while the opposition has a 28-24 majority in chances, the Flyers trio is outscoring them 3-0.

» READ MORE: Flyers avoid getting shut out in 4-1 loss to Kraken after three-day holiday break

On Sunday, Grundström broke through on Kraken netminder Philipp Grubauer late in the game to get the Flyers on the board. He skated into the offensive zone and sent a blistering wrister to extend his goal-scoring streak to three games.

Although they were on the ice for an empty-netter against, they controlled play for the most part, had nine chances to 10 against, three scoring chances vs. two for the Kraken, and did not allow a high-danger chance.

They also drew a power play after they sustained a strong forecheck and pressure in the first period.

There’s a reason the power play isn’t listed as ugly because, despite not scoring, it really wasn’t that dreadful. The two five-man units actually moved the puck well, especially Trevor Zegras, Noah Cates, Bobby Brink, Jamie Drysdale, and Travis Konecny.

But when you have three power-play opportunities against the league’s worst penalty kill (70.3% entering the game), you need to score.

“When we have shots from the point, or we go downhill in the shots, everybody’s on the perimeter,” Tocchet said. “Too perimeter tonight, that was the bottom line. That’s the only criticism for the team.

“... For most of the night, I thought we controlled a fair amount of the play, but you get three power plays, you’ve got to find a way, and you’ve got to find a way to score. That’s net-front goals, rebound goals. I don’t think we grabbed the rebound. So another learning thing that we’ve got to make sure.”

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It’s true. The Flyers’ power play controlled play and had several good looks. Drysdale was stopped twice on point shots before Zegras sent a cross-crease pass to Konecny, who was robbed. Denver Barkey made a play after nice puck movement to set up Owen Tippett, and the youngster had a chance seconds after the final power play ended.

The Flyers have just 59.2% of offensive zone time on the power play, whereas the best team, the Vegas Golden Knights, has 62.3%. Based on Sunday’s power plays, there is a chance that it has jumped up. Now they have to score.

“Similar to five on five, where we’re getting some chances and moving the puck well, and just, obviously, the goaltender played well, we’re not getting the looks with traffic that are necessary to score on a guy that’s playing that well.”

In the past two games before the holiday break, each a win, the Flyers scored a total of eight goals. According to Natural Stat Trick, six of those came right around the net.

Although the statistical site says that they had 4.17+ attempts around the net, it didn’t feel like they were able to take away the eyes of Grubauer.

“Yeah, thought we controlled most of the game and just couldn’t find a way to get one,” said defenseman Travis Sanheim. “We weren’t getting enough traffic when a goalie’s seeing it that well, got to get in front of them and deliver pucks, and then we make a couple mistakes, and unfortunate that we can’t come out with a win there.”

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The Kraken goalie made several easy saves with his glove, as he was able to see the puck well. Philly had four rebound attempts, with Sean Couturier and Konecny leading the way with three high-danger chances each.

“Maybe we gave him some easy looks at times,“ Couturier said. ”This may be the only, I think, negative, maybe we can say. But overall, I thought we played a good game, just didn’t capitalize when we had chances, and they did. So it could have went one way or the other, if we score one or two goals there at some point in the game."

Added defenseman Nick Seeler: “I think we need a little bit more traffic going to the net, get guys to the net when we’re trying to shoot from the points here, and hopefully get a few more deflection goals and things like that. But I think our forwards did a really good job forechecking tonight and hanging on to pucks, and so that’s a positive.”