Kate Frese/Flyerdelphia
If dropping Game 1 to the Washington Capitals by a 2-0 score wasn’t bad enough, the Philadelphia Flyers also lost the services of second-line center Sean Couturier for the rest of the series.
The Flyers lost the battle and may have lost the war all in one night.
Couturier was supposed to be a key factor in this series. His job was to shadow Alex Ovechkin and shut him down like Couturier has done to the likes of Evgeni Malkin in the past.
Now overall team defense will have to rule the day. Blocking shots will become an even more immense factor if the Flyers are to have any shot in this series. The Mark Streit and Nick Schultz pairing will have its hands full trying to contend with Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie and Nicklas Backstrom.
This season the Flyers are 6-9-4 without Couturier, and that may as well be 6-13 since no one gets anything except shame for an overtime loss in the playoffs.
Furthermore, without Couturier in the lineup, opposing teams score on the man advantage at a 23.1 percentage. That’s the same number the league-leading Anaheim Ducks power play had during the regular season.
The loss isn’t just about Couturier’s defense either. Without him, head coach Dave Hakstol will have to put Scott Laughton into the lineup. He’ll also have to move Brayden Schenn to center and either place Matt Read, Sam Gagner or Laughton on the second line.
To put some figures on this, Couturier starts 56 percent of his shifts in the defensive zone. Yet, he has a Corsi of 52.4 percent. Simply put, No. 14 turns defensive situations and turns them into offensive pressure. Expecting someone like Schenn or Laughton to replicate that is unrealistic.
Couturier’s absence starts a ripple effect the makes the Flyers that much weaker from the second line on down. And if the team is fragile in any aspect, it makes upsetting a deep Capitals team that much more difficult, if not impossible.
No Couturier in the lineup also means that any time someone like Wayne Simmonds takes himself out of the game, like he did Thursday with Tom Wilson, it’s magnified ten-fold. Any time someone like Schultz or Michael Raffl or Matt Read takes a penalty, the penalty kill is thinned out and the killers are that much more exhausted. There’s simply no room for any more crucial Flyers players to miss a shift now.
This series was never going to be easy for the Flyers. The Capitals won the President’s Trophy for a reason, but with Couturier in the lineup they had a puncher’s chance. With Couturier, the Flyers can go toe-to-toe with the Capitals. Without him, Ovechkin is free to run roughshod over the Philadelphia defense with Schultz sacrificing his body and Steve Mason acting as the only beacons of hope to stop him.
Before this series started, a Flyers series victory would be considered an upset. Maybe even a big upset. The uphill battle the Flyers face is now a treacherous peak the size of Mt. Everest. If the Orange and Black can find its summit, the 1994 San Jose Sharks may have to move over a tad as the greatest upset in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Dan Heaning is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Dan_Heaning.
