Third periods trouble Flyers

PHILADELPHIA, Pa – The Flyers have made an art form out of letting their opponents back into games.   Tuesday night, at the Wells Fargo Center, they did it again after carrying a 1-0 lead into the third, the Coyotes battled back to win 3-2 in overtime.
The Flyers were on the board early just 6:24 into the first period, when a shot fired from the point by defenseman, Matt Carle, deflected off of Ville Leino’s stick.   The Finnish forward’s deflection found a tight seam in Coyote goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov’s coverage of the net giving the Flyers the early lead.
Just 0:17 into the second period, former Flyer Scottie Upshall, barreled into defenseman, Oskars Bartulis, who’d been recently added to the lineup because of Sean O’Donnell being out with a knee sprain.   The questionable hit launched Bartulis towards the boards from the goal line.   The young defenseman spent several minutes face down on the ice, while being attended to by Flyers trainer, Jim McCrossin.   He had to be taken off and didn’t return for what would later be deemed a shoulder injury.   Upshall received a 2-minute boarding penalty.
General Manager of the Flyers, Paul Holmgren voiced his opinion of the hit.   “You know, Oskars was just standing there minding his own business,” said the GM.   “It was a late hit but it depends on how Oskars is.   I guess I have a little bit of a problem with it, yeah.   It’s not really like Scottie to do that, but things happen.”
It was a fast paced game with plenty of scoring chances, and plenty of grit.   Coyote defenseman, Nolan Yonkman took offense to a hit thrown by enforcer, Jody Shelley, in the second period.   Yonkman went to the box for a 2-minute retaliatory penalty.   The Flyers had a few decent chances during the man-advantage, but failed to score.
The moment Yonkman filed out of the penalty box, he made a bee-line for Shelley, and the two had a heated scrap that saw Shelley pummel Yonkman to the ice.   Although the clear winner, Shelley received 60 stitches as a result of the tilt and didn’t return.
After two periods, the score remained 1-0 and the Flyers were outshooting their opponents 22-16.   Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette believed his team should have been up by more than one at that point after several missed chances and hit posts.
Going into the third, the Flyers had dominated most of the play.   But only 2:44 into the stanza, Eric Belanger received a back door pass and fired it past Flyers’ goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, to tie the score.
The home team had been unable to put it away, and half way through the third, Taylor Pyatt wristed a fluky shot from a bad angle that flipped over Bobrovsky’s pads and in.
Luckily, with the goaltender pulled, All Star Claude Giroux battled for his own rebound and scored to take the game to overtime.  
Concerning the go ahead goal on Bobrovsky, Giroux said, “He had huge saves for us and kept us in the game, and it’s going to happen.   Goals like that, I think it was his first this season, so I guess it happens sometimes.   He is one of the reasons we got into overtime first of all, so it was good.”
After regaining the momentum, the Flyers carried play in the extra time, but an ill-timed penalty on Kimmo Timonen found the orange and black down a man.   During the penalty kill, Andrej Meszaros fumbled his stick and Coyote captain Shane Doan used the Flyer defenseman as a screen to put the game away.
When asked about the penalty, Laviolette said, “I didn’t like it.   I didn’t like that one and a lot of others.   We are preaching discipline and all we talk about is staying out of the box.   We’ll kill the ones we have to but with points on the line and things really valuable at this time of the year, I did not like the call.   There is a lot of stick work that goes on.   We were fighting around that net offensively and with 4-on-3, I again did not like the call.”
It was a poor way to lose a game and allowing third period come backs has become a trend for the Flyers.   They’ve allowed 60 third period goals, which puts the Eastern Conference leading Flyers ninth highest in the league in that category.   No other period has been worse to the Flyers.
“Going out in the second period, I just had a nervous feeling,” Laviolette said. “I thought the game should have been 4-0 at that point. It wasn’t, it was 1-0.”
Sunday’s game against the NYRangers nearly saw the same thing.   Entering the third with a 3-1 lead, the Flyers gave up a goal and the momentum.   The Rangers outshot the Flyers in the final period 15-3, and they barely survived with a 3-2 win.
Except for a few blips, the goaltending tandem of Bobrovsky and Brian Boucher has been strong.   Both boast a save percentage over .900, and either could be labeled the number one netminder on any given night.
The Flyers offense has looked unstoppable at times, scoring 198 goals for, which is third in the NHL.   Any player can help out offensively, as they have 10 double digit goal scorers, three of which have over 20.
The defensive pairings are arguably the deepest of any team in the league.   Four of their top six defensemen rank in the league’s top 30 in plus/minus.   And they’ve shown they can shut things down when needed.
The problem this season has been focus and execution.   They lack the ability to play 60 solid minutes, and at times look to be taking entire periods off.   They’re a juggernaut of a team and should have the ability to beat any team on any night, but lackadaisical play has led to turnovers, bad passes, and fumbled pucks.
“I think we’ve been playing pretty tight defense the last few games, and that’s that’s the way you’re going to win games down the road,” said Timonen.   “So, hopefully we can keep it up.   And as long as we can skate the full 60 minutes we’re going to win a lot of games, and I felt like today we skated maybe 40 minutes, and weren’t really there.   But we got another point and we move on.”
This season it’s the Cup or bust for the Flyers, but unless they can put together solid 60 minute efforts, they’ll see themselves falling by the wayside before they can raise hockey’s biggest prize. They’re back in action Thursday against division rival NYIslanders. Contact Chuck.Tay@prohockeynews.com Photographer Lewis.Bleiman@prohockeynews.com