Kraken’s Offense Too Much For Flyers

Chuck Fletcher and John Tortorella should play close attention to the Seattle Kraken. The Kraken are well balanced and are everything that the Philadelphia Flyers are not, but could very well be soon. The Kraken don’t have a cavalcade of stars, but have a lot of players who just mesh well together.

In a battle of the backup goalies, the Seattle Kraken downed Philadelphia, 4-3.  Philipp Grubauer stopped 15 of 18 shot attempts (only 18!!!) while Felix Sandstrom let in four goals on 21 shots.

The Flyers struck first in this game. What’s more impressive is that it happened on the power play! Owen Tippett scored his 11th goal of the season after being fed a pass by Rasmus Ristolainen. However, the Kraken would score twice in the first period. Jordan Eberle would score at 12:53 and Eeli Tolvanen would tack another goal about five minutes later.

Seattle would hold the lead until James van Riemsdyk tied it up at 3:33 into the second. Fifteen minutes later, Jaden Schwartz would score his first of two goals. His insurance goal would come in at 1:03 into the fourth to give the Kraken a 4-2 lead. And with about five minutes left in the game, the Flyers still had just 12 shots.

All was not lost, however. A great heads up play by Ivan Provorov led to a shorthanded goal by Patrick Brown with just 3:20 left in the game. Brown’s tally was the 10th shorthanded goal this year by the Flyers and leads the NHL.

With 90 seconds to go, Sandstrom was pulled. Tippett had two great chances but was shut down by Grubauer and the Kraken defense. The late effort wasn’t enough.

Seattle is a solid team, but they are not defensive giants. For the Flyers to get only 18 shots on net is atrocious. Travis Konecny, Kevin Hayes, Noah Cates, and Wade Allison never got a shot off. Likewise, newly called up Olle Lycksell made a few errors, including a turnover early on.

Hopefully the Flyers can dissect this game, pick it apart, and make some adjustments as they will have a rematch on Thursday in Seattle.