So Vinny’s coming home didn’t exactly have a happy ending.
In their second game of a Florida based road trip, the Flyers lost an ugly one to the Stamkos-less Tampa Bay Lightning, a game which saw the Flyers come out to the same sluggish start, only to try and rally for the win late. It was almost a spitting image of their performance against the Florida Panthers two nights before, a game that Panthers goalie Tim Thomas stole, thanks to his prior history against the Flyers as a Boston Bruin.
It didn’t help matters that the hottest Flyer at the moment, Matt Read, was down with what was listed as a lower body injury, and healthy scratch Michael Raffl took his place on the Couturier/Downie line. That trio was virtually on fire before Read got hurt, and not knocking Raffl, but it’s hard to replace a player who has scored 5 goals in 7 games, and currently was tied for the team lead with 8.
The game started off pretty slowly, and both teams didn’t do much throughout the first. Tampa did outshoot the Flyers by a wide margin, but no rewards for that effort as they carried a blank score into the second period.
That’s when big Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman essentially stole the show.
First he scored on a boomer from the point about 8 minutes in, then he scored a helper a few minutes later on Ondrej Palat’s goal, and it wouldn’t be his last tallies, and he struck again in the third to give Tampa Bay the solid 3-0 lead. The Flyers tried to again make a game of it near the end, but it was too little, too late.
Vincent Lecavalier did give some of his former and current fans something to cheer about with a goal late in the third, and less than a minute later fellow new addition Mark Streit rang one in as well, but with no time left on the clock, the Flyers went to the extra attacker and young Lightning Center Tyler Johnson sealed the deal with an empty netter.
Th effort that occurred during this two game road trip was painfully familiar with how the Flyers began the season, something pretty much everyone in the organization and fanbase would prefer to forget. Too much of the soft ticky tack passing, not enough trucking to the net, and generally sloppy play with the puck was the killer here. The Flyers will have the visiting Winnipeg Jets, who are a hot team at the moment in their own right, for an early Black Friday contest. The Jets snapped a 3 game winning streak a week and a half ago with a come from behind Shootout win against the Flyers. Revenge should be plenty of motivation if correcting the current ailments on offense aren’t enough already.
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