Tag: Phil Myers

Joel Farabee scored off the great feed from Hayes to secure a 5-4 win over the Nashville Predators on Thursday night at Wells Fargo Center on a night when the team honored Claude Giroux for his 1,000th game.  

With multiple roster moves throughout the summer, the Flyers are seeking to redeem themselves going into the 2021-22 season.

After a busy offseason, is there still a chance for young players to make their impact on the Flyers roster this season? The possibility exists for sure. It always does. The road to get there is just going to be much more difficult this time around.

The Flyers appear to be done for the offseason, outside of re-signing Carter Hart and Travis Sanheim, and are hoping a majority of their acquisitions turn out to be wins on “quality bets.”

As the market opens, the Flyers are still not finished yet. They will definitely be signing a goalie, likely on the opening day of free agency on Wednesday. Don’t rule out the addition of another forward as well to provide some added depth in that department. With those things in mind, here are a few candidates at each position that the Flyers could target in free agency.

Kyle Collington and Kevin Durso are here to discuss the four trades the Flyers made this week, going through each trade, as well as looking at GM Chuck Fletcher’s comments about gaining more energy and changing the mood in the locker room.

On Saturday, just prior to making their first pick in the 2021 NHL Draft, the Flyers made yet another trade, sending Jake Voracek to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for Cam Atkinson. The trade is one-for-one and no salary was retained.

When Saturday afternoon’s trade went down and sent Ryan Ellis to the Flyers for Phil Myers and Nolan Patrick, it came as a surprise to the veteran defenseman. That said, it also marks the beginning of a new chapter for Ellis.

The Flyers completed a trade with the Nashville Predators, adding defenseman Ryan Ellis in exchange or defenseman Phil Myers and forward Nolan Patrick. Patrick was sent to the Vegas Golden Knights in a separate deal involving the Predators and New York Rangers.

From a mid-January start with some early positive results to one final win/loss to the New Jersey Devils in mid-May to conclude the 56-game campaign, here are five takeaways from the season.

Joel Farabee scored his team-leading 18th goal of the season and Wade Allison scored a pair of goals as the Flyers defeated the Capitals, 4-2, on Friday night.

The Flyers dropped Tuesday’s game to the Devils by a score of 6-4, snapping New Jersey’s 10-game winless streak. Coupled with a win for the Boston Bruins, it reduced their tragic number to be officially eliminated from playoff contention to a combination of three points gained by the Bruins or lost by the Flyers.

After playing deep into the third period with relatively uninspired play, two quick goals by the captain turned the game around and forced overtime. Following the overtime, Kevin Hayes scored the game-winning goal in the sixth round, giving the Flyers a 4-3 come-from-behind win over the Devils on Sunday night at Wells Fargo Center.

Now with nine games to go, the countdown is on until the end of the season. The Flyers sit 11 points out of the final playoff spot. Their tragic number is down to seven. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. Friday’s game was just another example of all of the problems this team had over the course of this grueling schedule and this prolonged stretch of games without stringing together wins.

Notably in Thursday’s game, the Flyers saw their goalie perform at the level he’s shown before but struggled to get to this season. And he had to take center stage in the skills competition coin flip that is the shootout to secure a 2-1 victory over the Penguins.

How did the Flyers cap off this month? Quite possibly in the most fitting way, losing to a team that couldn’t win a game all month long, the only team that seemed to be finding a way to lose games more than the Flyers themselves. It wasn’t even a close loss, it was another embarrassment. The Buffalo Sabres snapped an 18-game winless streak as the Flyers closed March with a 6-1 defeat on Wednesday night.

The Flyers may be sitting fifth in the East, three points out of a playoffs, still very much mathematically alive. But their defense is in shambles. Almost every core player that was expected to produce on the higher end offensively has shown struggles. The goaltending has been questioned. To put it simply, the Flyers are a mess right now, and it’s become clear that the current system is just not working.

Sam Morin’s first NHL goal was the difference in this game, one the Flyers absolutely needed to have. It doesn’t solve all their problems and it remains to be seen what effect this has on the team moving forward. But this could be their last chance to take a positive moment, a moment that can bond a team, and turn the season around.

An unlikely hero emerged late in the third, as Sam Morin scored his first NHL goal with 4:27 to play in the game. That goal held up as the game-winner, in a much-needed, 2-1 victory for the Flyers over the Rangers on Saturday afternoon at Wells Fargo Center.

It may be March, but it sure feels like the Flyers are stuck on Groundhog Day. Tuesday’s game against the Devils certainly was recognizable. The Flyers fell behind due to a lack of urgency and puck management, only to claw back to within one goal late before time ran out. It’s happened at least three times this month now, with the latest installment coming in a 4-3 loss to the Devils. 

On the back end of a back-to-back, coming off a 9-0 drubbing, it was going to take something deep down for the Flyers to win this game. They got it from a line that was powered by their captain, and the goal came from their strongest player, one whose name was branded by an entire hockey community, city, and locker room.

After allowing the first two goals of the game to put themselves in another hole, the Flyers gave up another goal in the first two minutes of the second period. The game was essentially over right then and there, because the 18 minutes that followed were not just the worst the Flyers have played this season, they were historically bad.

Wednesday’s game was rock bottom, one of the most embarrassing efforts in Flyers history. After falling behind 2-0 in the first, the Flyers allowed seven goals to the Rangers in the second. You read that right: seven. A touchdown. That’s how things got to the final score in a 9-0 shellacking.

In the end, the Flyers probably got the deserved result for the chances they had in the third period and the strong start they had in the first. It’s two points they desperately needed and will take any way they can get at this point. The process on the ice may still have a lot of flaws and they were on full display again, but it’s a game the team can put back in the win column, another game where they took care of business against a team behind them in the standings. 

They got the win, they got the two points, and offensively, they did a lot of good things that ultimately resulted in the number of goals they needed to get the game to overtime. But there are plenty of flaws that, at least this season, appear to be beyond repair, and that’s concerning with more tough matchups coming in the weeks ahead.

The Flyers gave up three goals in the first four minutes of the game. Alain Vigneault used his timeout. The Flyers didn’t come back in waves, but trimmed away the lead and completed the rally with just over two minutes left in regulation, resulting in arguably their most impressive win of the season.

A deflection goal by Scott Laughton tied the game with 6:23 remaining, then Claude Giroux’s second goal of the game with 2:08 to play proved to be the difference in the Flyers 4-3 comeback win over the Penguins on Thursday night.

With their full lineup back on the ice, the Penguins showed the formula that defeats the Flyers, and did it without Sidney Crosby in the lineup. Following a quick response to a Flyers goal off a turnover, they commanded the play from there, and it didn’t seem to matter that the Flyers were throwing plenty of rubber at the Pittsburgh net.

This time, it was Carter Hart’s turn in goal to have an excellent outing in goal to help the Flyers get another two points in the standings. It just happened to involve a three-goal second period that produced another 3-0 victory.