Western Swing Deflating Efforts for Flyers

For whatever reason, the Flyers’ schedule always seems to have the team on the road for the holidays and the efforts are never what you’d expect them to be. In the last two tilts, the Flyers ran into an exhausted Los Angeles Kings (7-4 win) and then were tired themselves, failing to put in a full 60 minutes against the Anaheim Ducks (5-2 loss).

Against the Kings, coach Peter Laviolette decided to completely blow up his lines in an attempt to re-ignite the offense, and it seemed to work. A Mike Richards-Danny Briere-James Van Riemsdyk line combined for four goals while a Jeff Carter-Ville Leino-Andreas Nodl line tallied two.

Defensively, the team appears to have some weak spots without Chris Pronger. Letting up four goals against a tired opponent isn’t going to win many hockey games, although a rather pedestrian effort from goaltender Michael Leighton in the first period didn’t help matters either. I have to agree with the decision to play Leighton, if at least to gauge his stock, and I would be surprised if he didn’t see action again in one of the home-and-home games against the New Jersey Devils.

The defense was poor again last night, as the orange and black dug themselves into a 3-0 deficit before they started to right the ship. The first goal was completely at fault to defenseman Oskars Bartulis, who was caught flat-footed at the blue-line and then tried to dive in front of the skates of Jason Blake to save face. Blake shot high on goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, and it was all she wrote.

I’ve heard the argument that you can’t fault Bartulis with his weaker play because of the size of his cap hit and contract, but I’m more concerned with winning games than who is being overpaid. The contracts are what they are at this point, and it’s the organization’s responsibility to ice a competitive team in a salary cap driven league.

Andreas Nodl and Jeff Carter scored to bring the game to within 1, but then Anaheim continued to pressure until they had the game well in hand.

On the plus side, the powerplay has looked much better in the last two games than it has for the bulk of the season. It doesn’t appear like they are over-thinking it as opposed to keeping things simple. They may not have scored, but they were generating scoring opportunities.

The Flyers kick off the new year tomorrow evening in Detroit, hoping to earn a win against the Red Wings in Joe Louis Arena for the first time since 1988. The Wings lost to the New York Islanders yesterday, so who knows what to expect?