Flyers play bad game, lose 9-0 in New York

Woof. The Flyers went into Madison Square Garden this evening hoping to recreate a little of the magic that carried them over the New York Rangers this past Monday. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. The abysmal performance led to a thorough shellacking of the Flyers, who came out flat to start and rolled over almost as quickly.

The first period had innocent enough beginnings. It took about 7 minutes of hockey for the Rangers to find the back of the net when Adam Fox did all the work before finding Brendan Lemieux to put one past Brian Elliott. With about 5 minutes left in the first frame Rangers star, Artemi Panarian blasted a second goal past Moose after a defensive giveaway led to a complete defensive collapse.

The Flyers had some chances but were unable to get one past Rangers goalie Alexandar Georgiev. The real story of the period was a struggling Phil Myers, having one of the worst games of his young career. Being on ice for both goals, and taking two careless slashing penalties, the young defenseman look outmatched by the Rangers forecheck.

And then the second period happened.

I simultaneously have a whole lot and very little to say about the second period. I usually try to take very detailed notes of games that I do these write-ups for. I like to have a lot to talk about and weigh positives and negatives. Literally, nothing positive happened in the second period.

The Rangers hung 7 goals on the Flyers in the second period, with 4 of them being given up by Carter Hart after Elliott was chased 7 minutes into the period. The first of these goals would come on a shorthanded 2 on 0 chance for the Rangers after Ivan Provorov fumbled the puck, and no one but blue shirts got back.

Mika Zibenejad has a natural hat trick, while also tallying 3 helpers for a six-point period. He would become only the second player in NHL history to accomplish the feat. Meanwhile, Phil Myers and Travis Sanheim completely fell apart, with Myers being solely responsible for several of the goals.

Alex Georgiev made a spectacular save on what felt like the Flyers’ only chance of the period, and a completely defeated Flyers limped into the dressing room down 9 after allowing a Filip Chytil goal in the final minute.

The NBCSN announcing crew seemed astounded that despite being down by such a large margin, the Flyers were still allowing odd-man rushes and prime scoring chances, seemingly from a complete inability, or perhaps refusal, to backcheck.

As maybe the only Flyers fan that watched the entirety of this game I feel comfortable saying I don’t think the goalies were the problem tonight. What can you do when no one on your team can clear the zone, every Rangers’ entrance is an odd-man rush, and there isn’t a single white jersey on the ice playing anything that vaguely resembles defense?

The third period was totally uneventful. The broadcasting team sounded like they were calling a baseball game, and were more interested in making fun of Brian Boucher for giving up 9 goals in a game 15 years ago.

With 5 minutes to go the Garden’s crowd erupted into chants of “we want 10”, and if it’s any cancellation, they didn’t get it. Though a Scott Laughton slashes with 20 seconds left certainly had me sweating.

Mercifully, the game came to a close. And I am speechless. You can’t win if you don’t score, and you can’t win if you give up 9 goals. This was an ugly, embarrassing, and mind-numbing loss, and the Flyers are going to need to figure themselves out if they want to ever win a game again, much less make the playoffs.

They don’t get long to dwell though, as they travel to the island to take on the New York Islanders tomorrow night.