Banged-up Flyers get trounced by red-hot Lightning originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
The undermanned Flyers were no match for the scorching Lightning in a 7-2 drubbing Saturday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
The seven goals allowed marked a season worst for the Flyers.
“It’s one of those games,” Rick Tocchet said. “When you play the game long enough, you’re going to have those type of games. But we do need some better efforts. A couple of our guys that we count on to score are turning the puck over too much. You can’t play that way. Too slow, east-west.”
With two goals and two assists, superstar Nikita Kucherov did the most damage for Tampa Bay.
On the Flyers’ side, Garnet Hathaway and Owen Tippett provided the goals. Hathaway recorded his first point of the season with a redirection just 4:15 minutes into the action.
The Flyers (22-13-8) had a three-game point streak halted (2-0-1). Tocchet called the loss a “learning lesson.”
“You learn and then you apply it and then you get better,” the head coach said, “which our team has done.”
Tocchet’s club was without Travis Konecny, Bobby Brink, Jamie Drysdale and Tyson Foerster. More on the team’s injuries here.
“We had to play, not a perfect game, but a smart game,” Tocchet said. “There were chunks of the game that we didn’t. The effort was there, I have no problem with the effort, especially the first 30 [minutes].”
The Lightning (27-13-3) have ripped off nine straight wins, a stretch in which they’ve scored five goals per game.
The Flyers are 0-2-0 in their three-game regular-season series against Tampa Bay. The clubs will wrap things up in two days.
• Samuel Ersson, making his first appearance in January, surrendered the seven goals on 23 shots.
He has given up four or more goals seven times in 16 starts.
“He’s struggling a little bit, you can tell,” Tocchet said. “You’re going to have tough nights. It’s a tough night. To have an NHL career, sometimes you’re going to be in the mud and you’ve got to get yourself out of it, you’ve got to work harder, you’ve got to analyze things. Not just him, anybody.”
Kucherov got Ersson twice in the opening 6:05 minutes of the game. The 2018-19 MVP was left all alone in front for the game-opening marker. Not even two minutes after Hathaway tied it up, Kucherov struck again.
Thirty-five seconds later, Ersson received a Bronx cheer when he made a save. He heard it some more in the third period.
“We’ve got to be better in front of him,” Tippett said. “Those are tough games to play. Obviously I think he deserved better. I don’t know if the sarcastic cheers are really appreciated, but we’ve got to do a better job in front of him and not put him in some of those situations.”
The 26-year-old entered the game with the worst save percentage of his career at .868.
“We’ve got to work with him, we’ve got to help him out, too,” Tocchet said. “Whatever we have to do to help him with the mental or physical. Got to show up the next day, we’ve got practice tomorrow and just be ready to go. That’s the only way you get out of these things.”
Ersson found his footing a bit after the early goals, but Nick Paul extended the Lightning’s lead to 3-1 in the second period. After Ersson made the initial stop, Paul rolled in unimpeded for the rebound opportunity.
Tampa Bay then went off for four goals in the third period to make it a total rout. The Flyers definitely opened up defensively as they pushed for offense, which didn’t help Ersson’s chances.
“In the third, when we’re chasing, we’re trying to create offense and we’re trying to keep our gas on the pedal, that’s when they counterattack, that’s when they’re good,” Hathaway said. “Regardless of the score, we lost.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy, who came in with consecutive shutouts over the Flyers, stopped 18 shots for the Lightning.
“Just an awful third period,” Sean Couturier said. “We’ll just move on. It’s one of those games you’ve got to forget quick.”
• The Flyers began Saturday tied with the Capitals for the NHL’s second-worst power play at 15 percent.
The woes on the man advantage were costly in the club’s 2-1 overtime loss Thursday night to the Maple Leafs.
On Saturday night, the Flyers went 1 for 2. Tippett’s power play goal stopped the third-period bleeding temporarily for the Flyers.
• The Flyers and Tampa Bay meet again Monday back here at Xfinity Mobile Arena (7 p.m. ET/NBCSP).
