Highlights Beyond Highlights- Jan. 2 vs. Oilers

The Flyers found themselves in a tough spot on Tuesday night, sitting at the end of a four-game road trip against an Edmonton team that is lights-out right now, coming into the contest off a five-game winning streak where they’d scored 24 goals.

The Flyers hung with them for most of two periods and clawed back to tie the score in the second, but lost momentum on a late third period power play goal and didn’t have the gas to mount another comeback in the third.

As Travis Konecny pointed out postgame, the Flyers hung with Edmonton at 5-on-5 and on the penalty kill – they again generated shorthanded chances, with four shots on goal during the PKs. One way to defend an Edmonton power play is to get a scoring chance on which a penalty is drawn that cancels out the rest of the power play, and that’s what Scott Laughton did late in the first period. This play starts with an excellent check by Travis Konency down the left-wing boards, as he arrives to dispossess Leon Draisaitl before Draisaitl even knows he’s there. That starts Laughton the other way, and Connor McDavid has to tackle him to prevent the scoring chance.

On the Flyers’ first goal, Sean Couturier started the play with something that is not an accident – it’s a puck that’s floated out of the zone and intended to land at the feet of one or two attacking Flyers forwards. It works in this case, as Couturier finds the duo of Scott Laughton and Konecny. It ends up on Konecny’s stick, and he puts a pretty wrister into the top corner. But this type of play is an intentional part of the team’s transition attack.

Finally, while not a highlight, I wanted to break down Cam Atkinson’s tripping penalty late in the second period.  It’s a tough time to take a penalty, but it’s one that’s actually born out of hustle, not out of a lazy play.

It might take a couple playbacks of the clip, but watch how first Atkinson steps in to finally knock the puck off McDavid’s stick after Ryan Poehling kept McDavid at bay.  It ends up with Evan Bouchard at the point. The next thing Atkinson does is he anticipates a d-to-d pass by Bouchard and tries to position himself in the lane. Had Bouchard tried to make that pass, Atkinson is gone on a breakaway.

Unfortunately for Atkinson, Bouchard instead accelerates down the wall, and Atkinson is a step behind because of the attempt to block the passing lane. He tries to catch up to Bouchard, and what ends up being the trip is actually an attempted stick lift.  Atkinson reaches and tries to lift the stick and steal the puck; however, because he couldn’t close the gap as much as he would have liked, he doesn’t have leverage. As a result, the stick bounces off Bouchard’s stick and into the defenseman’s skates.  It is not a direct reach into the player’s skates as it appeared in real time.

Atkinson will be the first to tell anyone that he needs to be better than he has been lately. But that penalty is taken while he’s trying to make something happen, not because of a lack of effort. So he’ll come back with the rest of the club to Philadelphia and get settled in for what’s a busy January, but includes two four-game homestands and a lot less travel. The group will look for some home cooking to help regain that edge that served them so well in November and December.