Bruins thwart Flyers comeback

 Game Story

The Philadelphia Flyers had a few days off thanks to Winter Storm Jonas cancelling their Saturday night game, but they didn't come out with much jump in their legs against the Boston Bruins. Things started to go wrong after a relatively soft penalty on Michael Raffl gave the Bruins a power play, on which Patrice Bergeron scored. Ten minutes later, the Bruins scored another power play goal, this time with Brad Marchand blasting in a nice feed from Zdeno Chara.

Fortunately, the Flyers came out with much more jump in the second period. They squandered a power play off the opening faceoff of the period, but earned another power play a few minutes later. On that second power play, Wayne Simmonds had a slam dunk goal after a nifty little pass in the crease from Brayden Schenn. The Flyers kept the pressure on for the rest of the period and earned two more power plays, but could not capitalize.

The third period was quieter than the first two, until Simmonds struck again to tie the game. Overtime looked likely, but the Bruins stunned the Flyers when Brett Connolly tipped in a point shot from Chara. After battling back from a 2-0 deficit, the Philadelphia Flyers fell to the Bruins 3-2.

Forwards

[What is Corsi rating?]

The chart above shows the Claude Giroux line putting in a very strong performance, which seems like a fair representation of the game. It seemed like all the Flyers even-strength chances were coming from this group. Like the game two weeks ago, where this line accounted for three goals, they had another dominant game against the Bruins. Last time they had a 80 percent Corsi against Chara and three total goals. This time, it was 70 percent and two goals for Simmonds, one on the power play. Either way, pretty good.

The Raffl line was the other positive line for the Flyers. Like most of the NHL, they didn't do much against the Bergeron line, but played okay otherwise.

The Flyers bottom-six forwards mostly saw the bottom end players for the Bruins, but failed to do much with it. Jordan Weal finally made his debut on the fourth line and second power play unit, showing some quickness and tenacity, but couldn't leave a significant mark on the game.

Defense

Radko Gudas and Michael Del Zotto broke their string of negative games. In Monday's game, they were often on the ice with the Giroux line against the David Krejci line, and had nice numbers during those stretches.

Mark Streit and Nick Schultz had a good game, playing mostly against the Bruins top two lines. Schultz's even-strength minutes were limited, but he's had better Corsi numbers recently and even popped up for a scoring chance.

It wasn't as good a night for Shayne Gostisbehere and Brandon Manning. Filling in for Evgeny Medvedev, who has been unsteady moving the puck out of the defensive zone, Manning and Gostisbehere were a little scrambly at times and conceded odd-man rushes. As is often the case, Gostisbehere added another power play point.

Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.