Seems like old times: Flyers struggling in goal
Steve Mason says he and fellow Flyers goalie Michal Neuvirth have allowed too many stoppable goals in the season's first three-plus weeks.
Steve Mason says he and fellow Flyers goalie Michal Neuvirth have allowed too many stoppable goals in the season's first three-plus weeks.
"They're momentum killers," Mason said after Monday's practice in Voorhees. "Guys make mistakes, it happens, but it's happened too often."
Mason and Neuvirth are off to shaky starts, but no one in the locker room is pointing fingers at them.
"It's not only the goalies, but the D and the forwards," winger Jake Voracek said. "There are six guys on the ice and we all have to be better defensively than we are now."
"Before the goalie makes a mistake, there's always someone in front of him making a mistake," winger Wayne Simmonds said. "There's always a chain of events that lead to a goal and not one singular play."
Coach Dave Hakstol said he wants more consistency from his goalies, who have combined to allow 3.69 goals per game, next-to-last in the NHL entering Monday.
But Hakstol added that "everything we do is a team game. Every time we give up a goal there's a team element to it."
The high-scoring Flyers, with Mason expected to get the start after sitting out the last four games, will host Detroit for the second time in seven nights Tuesday. They will be trying to extend their regular-season home winning streak against the Red Wings to 13 straight.
Last Wednesday, Mark Streit scored with 64 seconds left in regulation to tie it, and Voracek won it in overtime, taking a feed from Claude Giroux and one-timing a blast past Petr Mrazek.
The Red Wings haven't won at the Wells Fargo Center since 1997.
"It's a tough building to play in, and our fans are pretty nuts," Giroux said.
The Flyers have won three of their last four, and while their goalies haven't been sharp, their defense has been making strides.
"We have some things to work on, but our game is definitely getting better," Giroux said. "We need to find a way to get the lead and keep it, and if we do, we'll be a dangerous team."
The Flyers never trailed in the opener, a 4-2 win in Los Angeles on Oct. 14. Since then, they have trailed at some point in each of their last 12 games.
The Flyers dominated Montreal on Saturday, outshooting the host Canadiens, 38-17, but dropping a 5-4 decision as Neuvirth allowed a pair of bad third-period goals.
"We played a good road game," Simmonds said, "and have to draw from the positives."
They hope their goaltending will be a positive Tuesday.
"We have to take care of our own stuff," Mason, who believes 95 percent of a goaltender's performance is based on the mental aspect of the game, said of the Flyers' goalies. "If we clean up our own play, the defense is going to be better, the forwards are going to be better. As a six-man unit, we haven't been good enough in our own zone and it starts with the goalies."
"The team expects a lot more from the goalies than we've shown," Neuvirth said.
Breakaways. Neuvirth said that after a bad game, like his performance Saturday in Montreal, "I want to have a good practice and a short memory". . . . Matt Read moved up to left wing on the top line at practice, and Michael Raffl dropped down to the third line, where he alternated in and out of the lineup. Hakstol said he was "still looking for chemistry" on some of the lines. . . . Scott Laughton returned from the Phantoms and joined practice, but he is still on the long-term injured reserve list.
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