Nicolas Deslauriers’ goal not enough to spark Flyers comeback over Islanders

If you expected clean hockey coming out of the All-Star break, you would sadly be mistaken. The Flyers certainly looked like a team that had been off for eight days. And the Islanders, who had the same amount of time off, had much more energy to start.

It would’ve actually been expected if both teams came out sloppy. The Flyers and Islanders both played last Sunday. But the Islanders had more juice in the tank and were able to crack through during their 15-shot first period.

Carter Hart looked fresh as he had to withstand some tough pressure from the Islanders. Less than two minutes into the game, Hart was caught out of his net and had to scramble back. With the puck behind him, he almost ended up kicking it into his own net. It was Ivan Provorov who saved the goal as it lay right on the line.

He also saw a Simon Holmstrom shot ring off the post and was forced to make some tough saves on Bo Horvat and Mathew Barzal as well.

The Islanders were able to break through Hart, who stopped the first 12 shots that he faced. On their second power play of the first period, Josh Bailey skated into the middle of the offensive zone. He found Kyle Palmieri, who took a few strides before snapping it home along the left face-off dot.

Sebastian Aho, with the secondary assist, skated the puck out from his own defensive zone. Not skating into the zone though, he dropped it back to Bailey who was then able to bring it up from the defensive zone once more. The Islanders ended up covering a lot of space to make that goal happen.

Things could have been worse for the Flyers, but they only trailed by one goal after the first period. They picked things up in the second period, getting the first six shots. But once the Islanders were able to find time in the zone, they didn’t miss.

On just their second shot of the period, Mathew Barzal got positioning in the crease on Tony DeAngelo. Noah Dobson, who was able to skate in from the point, fired a shot on the net that Barzal was easily able to deflect. It was less than two minutes later that the Flyers found a response, however.

The fourth line does plenty of the heavy lifting for the Flyers in terms of physicality and overall just bringing energy. But sometimes, they can chip in on the offense as well. DeAngelo walked the blue line and fired a shot toward Varlamov. With some traffic in front, Nicolas Deslauriers had his stick out as the puck deflected off of it and past the Islanders’ netminder. Patrick Brown was also in front of the net as well.

While the Flyers looked a lot better in the second and found a way to respond, they still had an uphill battle ahead of them heading into the third. They had a golden chance to tie the game after Owen Tippett drew a slashing penalty. However, they couldn’t get anything going and actually gave up a shorthanded chance.

With just under three minutes to go, the Flyers elected to pull Hart for the extra attacker. They were unable to get another one past Varlamov, falling 2-1 in their return from the break.

They’ll hit the practice ice for the next two days before returning to the Wells Fargo Center to take on Connor McDavid and the Oilers.