Morning After: Lightning strikes in costly penalty

There were no penalties called in the first period. In the second, nine were called between the two teams.

But it was a late third-period penalty for too-many-men that proved most costly to the Flyers. Ironically, it was also one of the few that they agreed with following a 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night.

"We’ve been a disciplined team all year and all of a sudden we’re undisciplined tonight?" head coach Craig Berube said. "I’ll give them too many men on the ice. That was the one good one they called."

The calls definitely didn't go the Flyers way. A two-man advantage was nullified when Claude Giroux was called for holding the stick to counter a holding call on Brian Boyle. Luke Schenn's hooking penalty was eerily similar to Giroux's holding the stick penalty.

Zac Rinaldo's roughing penalty was the one that really got to Berube.

"If it’s a non-hitting league now, I guess it’s a penalty," Berube said. "I’ll have to check into that."

It also led to Steven Stamkos' first goal of the night.

"The second period, we had four penalties in a row and that kills you. And the same thing in the third," Berube said. "You can’t be in the penalty box all game. It’s tough."

The frustration didn't take away from the Flyers inability to silence the Tampa power play. The Lightning were 2-for-5 on the power play in the win.

"I would say there were couple of tough calls, but that’s the way they saw it. Nothing we can do about it," Jake Voracek said. "Just focus and try to kill it. We had a good third period but we got scored on the PK. It’s a tough loss and the game overall was better than the result."

The Flyers final game in a very difficult October didn't deserve the final result. With 10 points following 10 games, the Flyers were pleased but not fully satisfied with the performance.

"It’s a tough group of teams we played," Ray Emery said. "We didn’t start off the way we wanted to, but we had a good stretch and put ourselves back into things."

A late call may have cost the Flyers a point in the standings on Thursday. But Berube said he thinks the Flyers left points on the ice much earlier in the month.

"I think there’s a couple more wins in there," Berube said. "There was a couple games early on in the season where we just didn’t push enough. We weren’t aggressive enough in the game to win it."

November provides more opportunities for points and the Flyers improvement should make them confident heading into a month with a different look to the schedule. 

There may not have been points on Thursday. But there was even more progress. For now, that's a reason to see the positives.

Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @KDursoPhilsNet.