10 observations: Flyers lose early lead, fall to Gauthier, Carlsson and Ducks by 5-4 score

PHILADELPHIA — Cutter Gauthier finally can say that he has taken down his nemesis in Philadelphia. Even if he was far from the only reason — or even the biggest reason — why.

The Philadelphia Flyers jumped out to a 2-0 first period lead, but then allowed the Ducks to tie the game twice in the second before Tristan Luneau’s third period goal gave Anaheim a lead they would not relinquish, eventually hanging on for a 5-4 victory.

Matvei Michkov continued his blazing-hot start to the season, scoring twice, while Porter Martone and Tyson Foerster added goals of their own. But Joseph Woll had his first truly rough game with the Flyers, allowing five goals on 26 shots. Gauthier finished with one assist — a set up via a strong forecheck on Anaheim’s first goal, scored by Flyers summer signee Leo Carlsson.

Turning point of the game

After 20 minutes, the Flyers appeared to have this game well in hand. They were up 2-0, courtesy of two power play goals aided by Hunter McDonald’s knack for big hits and infuriating the opposition. They were outshooting the Ducks. They were outplaying the Ducks. It appeared that yet another victory over Cutter Gauthier in Philadelphia was a foregone conclusion.

The problem? The Flyers started acting like it.

“I think we thought it was going to be a bit of an easy night, I really do,” head coach Rick Tocchet said. “And that happens to teams sometimes. You’ve got to be careful of that.”

In the Flyers’ defense, the second period didn’t start out too bad. Noah Cates noted that the players were starting to slack on their details — namely getting pucks deep — but it wasn’t having a major negative impact on their early period play: they were up 6-3 in shot attempts through the first six minutes. Even their first power play of the period started out looking plenty dangerous, complete with high-end puck movement by the first unit.

But they ultimately didn’t score, passing up on multiple quality shot opportunities in the process. Now, it’s hard to pin too much of the loss on the PP — after all, they were the reason for the 2-0 lead in the first place — even if it was an opportunity to bury the Ducks, as was the second PP that came their way four minutes later. It’s far easier, however, to blame what happened in between those two unsuccessful power plays: the flubbed handoff behind the net between Woll and Nick Seeler leading to Carlsson’s goal.

It’s difficult to pin this solely on one player versus the other — Woll does not put Seeler in a good spot with Gauthier bearing down on him; Seeler could have made a quicker decision with the puck rather than freezing. (Woll gets the ignominious tiebreaker because there’s a good chance this gets whistled for icing if he doesn’t go out to play the puck.) But regardless of the assignment of blame, this should have been a one-off bad play. As Cates pointed out after the game, the Flyers were still ahead 2-1. It shouldn’t have been the turning point of the game.

Except they allowed it to be.

“It kinda deflated us, for whatever reason,” Cates acknowledged after the game. “Guys got to step up and say, we’re playing fine. One goal, it’s whatever. We’re still in the lead. We’ve still got ahold of this game if we play the right way.”

But for the rest of the period, the Flyers did not “play the right way.” Anaheim took control, tying the game shortly after the second failed Philadelphia power play of the period, and quickly countering after Tyson Foerster scored a (pretty fluky) shorthanded goal to briefly give the Flyers back the lead. The final 10 minutes of the second period — brief Foerster respite aside — were all Ducks.

“In the second there, we kinda let them off the hook,” Cates said.

Maybe memories of the nine-game losing streak crept back into their heads after such a sloppy series of events. Maybe the team showed its youth at an inopportune time. Maybe one of the team leaders (or the coach) should have stepped up on the bench with the right message to keep the period from going off the rails. Regardless, after the Carlsson goal, the Flyers looked totally out of sorts for the remainder of the period, and in retrospect, it was when they blew their best opportunity to lock down a win.

The Flyers largely stabilized in the third period. Yes, they were outscored 2-1, but the first goal came on an uncharacteristically egregious mistake by Woll, and the second via a Ducks power play. At 5-on-5, the Flyers went back to outplaying Anaheim in the third, and nearly tied the game on a number of occasions after Michkov cut the deficit back down to 5-4.

But they’d already squandered their edge via their lapse in the second period. Heroics never should have been required in the first place.

Who won the 5-on-5 possession battle?

The especially tough part to swallow about this game? The Flyers, in aggregate across 60 minutes, played a strong enough 5-on-5 game to win this one.

That’s not to say they were dominant. Usually, public models are in agreement on who “won” the 5-on-5 xG battle, but that wasn’t the case this time: Natural Stat Trick and Evolving-Hockey give the edge to the Flyers, Hockey Stats and MoneyPuck to the Ducks. In any case, it was very close — close enough that this game could have went either way. Plus, in terms of possession volume (38 – 30), the Flyers absolutely had the edge, winning the neutral zone handily for the first time this season.

Aside from the poor dump-in retrieval rate, that’s absolutely a winning formula for the Flyers: high controlled entry rate for, low controlled entry rate against, low retrieval rate allowed, sizable advantage in possession entry volume. So what happened?

Well, for starters, their penalty kill got gashed. Even before the Ducks finally broke through with the (eventual) gamewinning goal, they were generated tons of high-danger chances, making Foerster’s shorthanded “snipe” all the more unlikely. That’s why the Flyers trailed in all-situations xG by all of the public models; while there was disagreement on which team won at 5-on-5, there was universal agreement that Anaheim created more chances overall.

But the Flyers also probably could have squeezed more offense out of their 5-on-5 possession, as Matvei Michkov pointed out. Given all the zone time and quality chances they created, they really should have had more than one 5-on-5 goal — one that came with the team already down 5-3.

“5-on-5, we have chances,” Michkov said. “We need to score. We have today lot of chances.”

Saturday just felt like a missed opportunity on a number of levels.

Flyers Three Stars of the Game

First star: Matvei Michkov

It’s time to start seriously considering that Michkov is embarking on a star-making third season in the NHL. He now has eight goals and ten points in 13 games — that’s a 52-goal and 65-point pace over 84 contests. Even more impressive is the fact that he’s doing this on a team that otherwise can’t buy a goal. The Flyers have 24 goals so far this season, which is the lowest goal-per-game pace in the NHL. Michkov has a third of them.

No, he’s not going to keep scoring on 42.9 percent of his shots. But Michkov should start picking up more assists, as the rest of the Flyers (hopefully) rediscover their ability to finish on chances (Foerster finally breaking through on Saturday feels like a positive sign in that regard). Michkov’s supreme offensive confidence from the best stretches of his rookie season is back, except this time it’s in a package that is quicker, stronger and two years wiser. That’s a dangerous proposition for opposing teams.

Second star: Porter Martone

Martone wasn’t perfect in this one — he’s still a bit off in terms of his decision-making with the puck, and the Flyers desperately need him to rediscover his shooting assertiveness (just one shot on goal today and 15 in 13 games). But he’s looking very effective on the new PP1, and his 5-on-5 usefulness is growing as he continues to attack the net more and more. He played an integral role in Michkov’s third period goal by doing just that.

He’s still a ways away from getting back into the Calder Trophy race. But clear steps are being made.

Third star: Trevor Zegras

After his two-assist game on Saturday, Zegras now has seven points in his last four games. The resurgent power play has helped, but Zegras has been an integral part of that resurgence, taking to the left side of the formation like a fish to water despite it not being his preferred spot. More than any of the other mid-20s players who started the season slow, Zegras is returning to form.

Goaltending vibe check

Let’s start out with a necessary piece of context: before Saturday, Joseph Woll had been straight-up stellar for the Philadelphia Flyers. His only “bad” game had been a 26-save, four-goals-allowed performance against a far superior Carolina Hurricanes club, during which he received little help from his skaters. Otherwise, Woll had been fantastic, stealing the Flyers two loser points they wouldn’t have gained otherwise, and keeping them in every other game he started. Woll can be forgiven a one-game lapse.

But yeah, this game was a lapse.

Three goals he allowed can be largely pinned on Woll. There was the Carlsson goal, which wasn’t a bad goal in a vacuum, but only occurs because Woll puts Nick Seeler in a bad spot behind the net with an awkward play of the puck (and, he canceled out a likely icing by choosing to play it in the first place). There was the Greer goal, which was a low-to-the-ice, low-velocity shot that shouldn’t have required the post to keep it out in the first place, before bouncing back into Woll’s skate and into the net. And then, there was the truly ghastly Luneau goal, which broke the 3-3 third period tie.

Woll just can’t allow this goal past him, especially given the high-leverage nature of the situation. It should have been a routine save; instead, it forced the Flyers to play catch-up for the remainder of the contest.

It’s important to note that Woll wasn’t all bad in this one: he held down the fort nicely against Anaheim’s power play for most of the contest, and kept Gauthier off the board despite the Flyers draft pick having two golden opportunities late in the second. But if the Flyers received the Woll from the vast majority of his other starts this season, they likely cruise to victory. And it’s the memory of those other starts that ensured no one on the Flyers would blame Woll for this one, even though objectively (and by Woll’s own admission), he was probably the single biggest reason they lost.

“He’s fine,” Tocchet said. “There’s a couple of fluky goals. He’ll be fine.”

The Cutter of it all

For the third time, Cutter Gauthier hit the ice in Philadelphia as a member of the Anaheim Ducks. And while he certainly still stands as Public Enemy #1 for Flyers fans, this one didn’t quite have the same in-arena vitriol as the previous two contests.

That’s not to say Gauthier wasn’t booed. He certainly was. But the anti-Gauthier chants, while still there, weren’t constant this time. The boos, while loud, weren’t unrelenting. In the first two contests, it seemed like fans were there first to torture Gauthier, and second to watch a hockey game. This time, for the first time, their priorities seemed flipped.

Maybe that was always inevitable. Gauthier will be a villain in Philadelphia forever, but those first few games had extra juice because fans were getting their first chances to let loose on the top prospect who had scorned them. Now, many of them have already gotten that point across. It doesn’t make it any less viscerally enjoyable for Flyers fans when their goalie stones Gauthier twice on the doorstep, of course. But this game didn’t have the same party-at-Cutter’s-expense atmosphere that the other two did.

Tocchet to blame at all for the loss?

The nine-game losing streak had a major impact on the emotions of the fanbase on many levels, but more than anything else, it pushed many previously agnostic on the question of Rick Tocchet’s quality as head coach onto the anti-Tocchet side. So in the wake of the loss — the Flyers’ first since the conclusion of the streak — Tocchet unsurprisingly came in for criticism, specifically for the decision to go with Joseph Woll over Dan Vladar.

In this case, however, I find it difficult to put much blame on the coach.

Certainly in hindsight, it looks like a bad decision. And even pregame, preferring Vladar was more than justifiable — he did enter the season as the team’s presumptive No. 1, and he was coming off a stellar game in Buffalo, his best of the year. Tocchet certainly could have chosen this moment to shift back towards Vladar, and in retrospect, there’s a good chance it would have worked out better than the Woll decision.

But this strikes me as more of a hindsight-driven critique. Woll entered Saturday the better statistical goalie on the season, even removing Vladar’s rough Game 1 out of the equation. Really, the Flyers have two true-talent above-average goalies as options — both were reasonable choices without the benefit of a time machine. Picking Woll just didn’t work out. There was no reason to believe a Woll flop was imminent.

Tocchet’s usage strategies also weren’t an issue in this one, particularly in terms of preferring low-upside veterans over youngsters (a fair area of critique over the first nine games). Michkov finished with 18:15; Martone got 18:25. Plus, over the final ten minutes of the third period, Cole Knuble jumped up to replace Noel Acciari on the top line, while Denver Barkey was moved into Sean Couturier’s spot with Alex Bump and Tyson Foerster. A logical decision to replace defense-first vets with more dynamic youth when trailing a goal, yes, but a good one all the same, and not one he may have made as recently as last week.

Probably the most fair critique of Tocchet in this one is that he proved unable to do or say the right thing on the bench to arrest the team’s second period sag. But that’s not a case of Tocchet losing the Flyers the game; it just means he didn’t go above and beyond in terms of helping them win it. (And if he had, it’s not like the fans or media would have been able to see/hear firsthand the impact of his words/deeds anyway.)

Overall, this game was lost primarily by the players losing their edge in the second period, and Woll delivering a dud. Tocchet’s blame mostly lies in the fact that ultimately, the buck always stops with the coach, and his failings over the first nine games were a big part of why every game moving forward has added importance, since now the Flyers have to make up for a nine-game hole.

Little great play of the game

Had the Flyers won this game, Hunter McDonald’s ability to conjure up a 5-on-3 out of thin air would have easily been the game’s turning point. Instead, he’ll have to settle for this less prestigious imaginary award.

For the second straight game, McDonald delivered a clean but absolutely vicious hit on an opponent; this time it was Sam Colangelo. He quickly earned the Flyers a power play opportunity when Colangelo came up swinging, intent both on getting some payback and spending two minutes in the box. Advantage, McDonald.

But McDonald wasn’t done yet. Just as things finally started to die down, his agitating side emerged. He got one last late poke on Colangelo, which caught the attention of A.J. Greer. Greer quickly dropped the gloves, and McDonald had somehow goaded a second Ducks player into taking a two-minute minor, this time for instigation. McDonald got a fighting major, but it was the most worthwhile five minutes he likely ever spent in the box; he got to watch his teammates score twice on the ensuing two power plays.

McDonald’s ability to play physical while avoiding by-the-book illegality with his hits helped the Flyers significantly in two consecutive games; it really should have won them both. Physicality will always be popular with those in the game due to the perceived intimidation factor and supposed cumulative effect, but those are intangible and difficult to quantify. Using that physicality to draw penalties is a very tangible benefit and extremely easy to quantify. McDonald seems to have a knack for it.

Flyers top line of the game

They may not have scored, but shoutout to the line of Denver Barkey, Jacob Gaucher and Cole Knuble, which was a big part of setting the tone for the Flyers in the first period. They didn’t receive a ton of ice time together, but they finished with a 79.14 percent xG share and turned heads with their relentless approach to puck pressure.

Grading the game for the Flyers

It wasn’t all bad for the Flyers in this one, but that’s what makes the loss especially difficult to swallow. At 5-on-5, the Flyers played well enough to win. They got two goals from red-hot Matvei Michkov. Yet they let a one-off bad play throw them out of their rhythm, and perhaps got a bit too comfortable after a stellar first period. That can’t happen — especially after lighting the first nine games of the season on fire. 3.0 out of 10.

Quote of the night

“I thought we played well enough to win the game, and I don’t think I played well enough to win the game.”

— Joseph Woll