Flyers: A Week In Review

Games: 4

Record: 2-1-1

The Flyers started out the week on Monday with an encouraging win over the New York Islanders. It was a great victory that the flyers certainly needed with strong showings from Steve Mason, Sean Couturier and even Brandon Manning who scored his first NHL goal. The next night in Columbus the Flyers struggled most of the game with the Blue Jackets dominating pretty much the entire game. Well except on the score sheet. Steve Mason was an absolute brick wall stopping a career high 53 shots throughout the night. It wasn’t till late in the game when the Flyers were up 2-0 that Columbus found the back of the net…… twice. It was depressing to see Mason’s hard work disintegrate from poor defensive pressure and a lazy clearing attempt from Wayne Simmonds with under 2 minutes left. The Flyers ended up losing in a shootout, which Mason also put up a valiant effort in. It was truly a game in which the Flyers deserved to lose as a team, but Mason himself deserved a win. After a night off the Flyers were back at it again on Thursday against a weakened Colorado Avalanche team. Missing two of their best skaters the Avalanche are also in a tight race for a final wild card spot, but luckily for the Flyers they played a strong game and took a 4-2 victory. Radko Gudas and Claude Giroux scored 19 seconds apart and after this you could really tell the Flyers were taking this one. Saturday came and everyone was excited for what should have been a Flyers’ win. But alas, this wasn’t the case. The Flyers controlled play for much of the game. Dominating in puck possession and shots, but unfortunately they weren’t able to generate many high danger chances, and their power play is still clearly suffering. The Flyers ended up losing 1-0.

All in all, the week wasn’t terrible, the Flyers earned 5 out of 8 possible points, but if you sat through those games you know there was still a lot left on the table. The Flyers are still in a wild card position, and Detroit is certainly help them hold their spot, but they are gonna need to buckle down. I feel like saying that the Flyers control their own destiny is overused but it’s 100 percent true. The upcoming week will prove to be difficult but I believe the Flyers are fully capable of solidifying their spot.

You can follow Ryan at @flywalker1975 on Twitter.