Saturday had the makings of something special for the Flyers.
Matvei Michkov scored twice in the first period, making for his third straight multi-point game in a stretch where he might be going from the promising rookie into a full-blown NHL star, and Aleksei Kolosov made a ton of crucial saves, continuing a run where the young goaltender seems to keep getting comfortable with the North American game.
At one point, late into the second period, the Flyers were up two and looked like they could check their way out of another 25 minutes up in Boston. The Bruins, though, stayed on them.
Trent Frederic knocked in his second of the game and then Brad Marchand got to a rolling puck behind the Philadelphia defense to move in toward and beat Kolosov all alone for the tie to force overtime. Then, in the extra frame, Bruins star David Pastrnak stripped a puck off of Owen Tippett in the corner, turned out from behind the net with checkers drifting toward him, then slipped a pass backdoor to Pavel Zacha for the winning mark.
The Flyers lost, 4-3. They still left with a point in the standings to move to 12-11-4 and stay within the early Wild Card mix, but with a second straight effort that they could've taken, too. They just didn't – couldn't seem to get a call to go their way either.
"That's just the NHL," defenseman Travis Sanheim, who notched two assists, said postgame. "There are nights like that. You gotta play through it.
"You don't know what's gonna happen one way or another. You just gotta roll with the punches and just keep battling through. I thought we did a pretty good job for most of the night. It's unfortunate that we couldn't get the two."
Thursday night back at home against Florida, the Flyers rallied for four goals in the second period, and then the go-ahead a few minutes into the third, to dig out of what had been a 3-0 hole and to put the defending Stanley Cup champion on the ropes.
They just couldn't hold it together.
Shaky goaltending that started with Ivan Fedotov and then shifted to Kolosov, chippy play, tacky, ill-timed penalties, and an ongoing struggle to put away their other dangerous scoring opportunities cost them.
They're still building, they don't know how to close out yet – regularly, that is. The Panthers do. They've already been there, and did it again Thursday night when Sam Reinhardt cashed in on power-play chaos in front of the Flyers' net late, followed by Matthew Tkachuk burying the empty-netter to put the game away.
The Bruins know how to, too, despite having struggled through the early part of the year. Marchand has seen just about everything to this point in his career and can still be a highly effective player, and Pastrnak is a playmaking star (notorious Flyers killer, too) who is constantly trouble whenever the puck is on his stick.
They can flip games quickly, just like the Flyers have shown they can do, but get those efforts to the finish line.
The Flyers are still trying to figure out how to get there. They're working on it.
"It's never a question with me about our fight," head coach John Tortorella said after Saturday's loss. "That's a given within our room, that's what keeps us afloat. That's the only way we're gonna stay afloat in this league, is that, is the will and not willing to give in."
There are signs that they are making progress, too.
Again, Michkov is becoming a star. His two first-period goals happened on fast, anticipatory sequences that not too many players can capitalize on.
On a power play just under eight minutes in, the 19-year old winger posted up by the right faceoff dot. An Emil Andrae point shot got blocked between the hashmarks and the puck took a bounce that fell dead to no one. Sean Couturier, battling for position in front of the Boston net, was the first to get a track on it and extended an arm out to nudge the puck the short distance over to his teammate. By the time it arrived, Michkov already had the shot loaded up, and Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman had no hope of stopping the incoming laser.
Later on, with 1:36 left in the period, Sanheim pinched down and picked a puck wrapping around the boards, immediately sending a thread of a pass straight through everyone and to Michkov at the opposite post, who had crashed down to tuck it in backdoor for a 2-0 Flyers lead.
Michkov, 25 games into his NHL career, is up to 11 goals and 24 points after Saturday, which leads the NHL's rookie class on the season.
On that same beat, Sanheim is continuing to roll through a breakout year, still taking up heavy minutes each game with excellent play at both ends of the ice, which is leading what has rounded into a solid top four of late – between him, a Cam York back from injury, a rapidly developing Andrae, and a rejuvenated Rasmus Ristolainen – and is proving that Team Canada selection right.
He fired off that pass to get the assist on Michkov's goal, got another on the feed that led to York's tally in the second, then in overtime, checked on a long shift to keep the Bruins at bay before finally getting an opening to go for a change – Boston scored the winner only after Sanheim was off the ice.
Then in goal, a notoriously plagued position for the Flyers going back decades, Kolosov was a big reason they had a chance on Saturday and throughout the recent stretch where they've gone without Sam Ersson as the No. 1 because of injury.
Thursday night had its problems. There's no getting around that, but against Boston on Saturday, Kolosov stepped back in the crease and responded. He stopped 27 of 31 Bruins shots in total, which included a cross-crease save on Morgan Geekie – even though a goal followed right after – and a later stop off a Tippett turnover that Boston moved in with, but that Kolosov stayed square on to fight away.
Ersson is still on injured reserve per the Flyers as of Friday, but with how Kolosov has held up and, in flashes, Fedotov, too, it does spark some optimism that maybe Philadelphia's long-unstable goaltending depth is finally turning a corner.
"Outstanding," Tortorella said of Kolosov's performance postgame. "I didn't think he was that good the last game. I didn't think either of our goalies were, but outstanding to come into this building here, against that club, and play the way he did. It was really good."
It's just that the Flyers couldn't keep it together.
They're still figuring out how, and they're getting there, but it's still going to take time.
One more thing…
Late in the second period, Boston's Charlie McAvoy tripped Michkov away from the puck, which drew a call. McAvoy took it as a dive and shoved Michkov back down to the ice once he got up, which sent Tippett as the nearest Flyer charging in after the Bruin.
Offsetting roughing minors were charged along with the delayed trip that put the Flyers on the power play, but after that, in the third period, the Flyers got crushed with three calls – including a highly questionable trip on Garnet Hathaway – that put them on the penalty kill and on their heels while Boston skated with no whistles.
Boston gets an extremely late whistle on this call…
John Tortorella is in DISBELIEF. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/NT4kTSFv91— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) December 7, 2024
Back on Thursday night against the Panthers, Travis Konecny had taken a hit to the face late in the first period that went ignored, and before the second started, Tortorella stormed down the tunnel and past his team to the bench demanding a word with the officials. After the Flyers lost, Tortorella declined to speak postgame.
On Saturday though, he wanted his say.
"One thing I teach my team to do is not dive," a visibly frustrated Tortorella said. "Maybe I should start teaching them that. The way this has gone here, the way s*** goes on, maybe I should start teaching them how to dive."
"I'm not gonna go to deep into it," he continued on the penalties. "It's one of the things we talk about most as a team, we gotta play an honest game. There's no cheating. There's no embarrassing referees. You don't embarrass the referees. The s*** that went on here tonight is just ridiculous…
"I'm proud of the way our team played. Did we piss another one away? Yeah, but other people had a little bit to do with that also."
The Flyers will be back home at the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday night to play Utah.
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