POSTGAME 5: Kraken Sink Flyers, 6-2

The Philadelphia Flyers were on the wrong end of a 6-2 whipping at the hands of the Seattle Kraken, at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on Thursday night. The Flyers trailed 2-0 after the first period and 5-0 through two periods.

The Kraken, showing their characteristic speed and puck pressure, scored goals just about every possible way: two breakaways, a 2-on-1, a 6-on-5, through generating traffic on the power play and through taking Flyers players off the puck and counterattacking. Two third period goals by Travis Konecny (25th and 26th of the season) were virtually the only bright spot for the Flyers.
The first period was lopsided in Seattle favor. The Flyers were outshot, 11-1, and outscored 2-0 on a shorthanded goal by Jared McCann (26th) at 3:01 and a Yanni Gourde deflection tally (7th) on a delayed Flyers penalty at 14: 39.
The Flyers got off to a better start in the second period, but the wheels soon fell off again. Philadelphia's deficit grew to 3-0 on a power play goal from the point by Justin Schultz (6th) at 5:52 of the second period. From there, things rapidly went further downhill on an Oliver Bjorkstrand breakaway goal (11th) at 11:26 and then Gourde's second goal of the game (PPG, 8th) at 14:43.
In the third period, Seattle's Matty Beniers (18th) sandwiched a breakaway goal in between Konecny's two tallies.
Carter Hart was pulled after 31:26 after the Kraken scored their fourth goal on 19 shots. Samuel Ersson went the rest of the way. He stopped 9 of 11 shots. Philipp Grubauer saw only 19 shots for the game. He carried a shutout into the third period and earned the win with 17 saves.
The Kraken have not been a good special teams club this season. The team does most of its damage at 5-on-5. On this night, however, Flyers went 0-for-1 on the power play, yielding a shorthande goal. The Kraken were 2-for-3 on the power play. Seattle also scored a 6-on-5 goal.
FLYERS STARTING LINEUP
13 Kevin Hayes - 49 Noah Cates - 74 Owen Tippett
25 James van Riemsdyk - 48 Morgan Frost - 11 Travis Konecny
86 Joel Farabee - 21 Scott Laughton - 57 Wade Allison
44 Nicolas Deslauriers - 38 Patrick Brown - 62 Olle Lycksell
9 Ivan Provorov - 45 Cam York
6 Travis Sanheim - 55 Rasmus Ristolainen
24 Nick Seeler - 77 Tony DeAngelo
79 Carter Hart
[33 Samuel Ersson]
TURNING POINT
When Jared McCann stripped Hayes of the puck and scored a shorthanded 2-on-1 goal at the other end, the air went out of the Flyers' ballloon despite there being almost 57 minutes left in the game. The first period was horrid for the Flyers:worse than Sunday's game against Seattle. The hole only grew deeper and deeper.
MELTZER'S TAKE
1) On the game's second shift, Cam York iced the puck. The Flyers won the ensuing draw. Philly iced it again at 2:01.
The game's first power play went to the Flyers at 2:23. Ryan Donato tripped York in the neutral zone. Seattle scored a shorthanded goal on the game's first shot on net. Jared McCann stole the puck from Hayes, led a 2-on-1 the other way and beat hart high to the short side. The goal was unassisted.
Frost cleanly won an offensive left circle faceoff after a Seattle icing. However, the Flyers were unable to do much withe the possession.
Wade Allison tripped Vince Dunn behind the Seattle net at 5:51 as the Kraken went on their first power play. Sanheim blocked an Oliver Bjorkstrand chance from the slot. A Justin Schultz point shot went on net through traffic.As the power play expired, Hart stopped a Yanni Gourde one-timer from the right circle.
At 8:13, van Riemsdyk found Frost going to the net but Frost tipped the puck wide. Shots on goal remained 8-0 Seattle. Around the 9:00 mark, the Cates line generated some offensive zone time but, again, no shots on net.
Hart denied a side angle shot by Eeli Tolvanen at 10:52 after he worked his way past Allison. A TV timeout ensued.
Nick Deslauriers dropped the gloves with gargantuan defenseman Jamie Oleksiak -- Deslauriers' 11rh fight of the season -- at 13:24.
With 6:18 left in the period, the Flyers finally got their first shot on goal: a routine side angle shot.
At 14:39, with a delayed tripping penalty upcoming on Sanheim, the Kraken grabbed a 2-0 lead attacking 6-on-5.Gourde deflected a Schultz point shot plast Hart. The secondary assist went to Tolvanen,
A fanned-on pass by Tippett and a turnover around the kickplate led to Seattle's 10th shot on goal of the opening period. Hart made the save on Schultz.
At 17:56, Provorov attempted a stretch pass to JVR. It missed connections and went for an icing. Gourde and Frost traded off faceoff wins on the next shift. Shots remained 10-1 in Seattle's favor.
At 19:10, Laughton had a look from the left circle. The puck went high and wide of the net.
2) As bad as the first period of Sunday's game against the Kraken went, this one was worse. The Flyers simply couldn't handle the Kraken's puck pressure and they generated nothing close to a scoring chance unless one counts the puck that Frost tipped wide of the net at 8:13. The Flyers, just as with Sunday's game, needed to skate quicker and think quicker, and it didn't happen. The early shorthanded goal by McCann seemed to have a carryover effect all period.
Shots on goal were 11-1 Kraken. Shot attempts were 18-8 Seattle. Scoring chances were 9-1 Seattle. High-danger chances were 3-1 Kraken. Faceofffs were 10-7 Flyers.
The Flyers turned the puck over five times (four credited takeaways for Seattle, one charged giveaway to York). The Kraken, which had the puck for so much of the period, officially had seven turnovers (six Flyers takeaways, one Kraken giveaways). None resulted in anything dangerous for Philly.
3) The Flyers started the second period with a line of Deslauriers, Cates and Tippett. At the 27-second mark, Tippett ripped a shot on net from the right circle.
Farabee, Laughton, and Bellows took the second shift. Sanheim made a good play with his stick in the defensive zone and jumped into the rush at the other end.
JVR, Brown and Konecny took the third shift. Hayes, Frost and Allison were out for the fourth shift. Seattle went offside at 2:24.
Brown and JVR created traffic in front of Grubauer on a Sanheim point shot Laughton won the next drawn back to Sanheim.
At 4:21, Laughton took an offensive zone hooking penalty on McCann. Deslauriers made a good defensive play near the blueline to force the puck out of the zone,. Hart denied Jaden Schwartz in the left slot. With 30 seconds left in the penalty, Seattle made it 3-0. Beniers passed from the right side boards to Schultz at the point with Gourde screening Hart. The shot made it through the traffic and into the net at 5:52.
The Seattle third line came out attacking, hemming the Flyers (Frost line) deep in their own end of the ice. Provorov blocked a shot.At 8:57, Hart stopped a blast by McCann.
Konecny very nearly snuck a shot from a sharp angle to the outside of the right post past Grubauer at 10:44. The goalie got just enough of his left skate on the puck to keep it from trickling over the goal line.
Seattle made it 4-0 at 11:26. Gourde stripped Bellows of the puck and sent it ahead to Bjorkstrand on a breakaway. He wristed a shot upstairs over Hart. Ersson entered the game and Hart exited after the goal. Shots for the game were 19-7 at this point.
At 13:09, Brown tripped Beniers behind the Flyers net. Seattle went to their third power play. At 14:43, the Kraken cashed in with good puck movement. At the end of the sequence, Gourde took a feed from Schwartz and hammered a shot over Ersson.The assists went to Schwartz and Eberle. As with Hart, it was the first shot on net that Ersson faced.
4) For the second straight game against Seattle,the Flyers mustered only a meager 10 shots on goal through two periods. This tine, though, not only were the Flyers significantly outplayed at 5-on-5, they also sprung a leak on special teams.
Second period shots on goal were 9-8 Flyers. Shot attempts were 23-20 Flyers. Scoring chances were 12-8 Flyers with an 8-3 high danger edge to Philadelphia. All that really mattered, of course, was the Seattle lead growing from 2-0 to 5-0.
Through two periods, Hayes skated only 6:57 of ice time and nine shifts.
5) Fourteen seconds into the third period, Konecny finally broke his scoring drought, He went to the front of the net and deflected a Cates shot past Grubauer. The secondary assist went to Provorov. The tally gave Konecny his career-high 25th goal.
At 1:47 Frost won a defensive zone faceoff and then took the puck off his left hand moments later on a blocked shot. He was in a lot of pain going to the bench. He missed one shift and then returned.
Konecny created a scramble near the Seattle net. Seattle iced the pick at 4:35. Through 7:06 of the third period, shots were 3-2 Flyers.
At 7:40, Seeler took exception to McCann pushing him at Ersson at the whistle after a long range shot. There was a lot of shoving and chirping but nothing further.
York gave up the puck to Bjorkstrand in the defensive zone. The shot attempt rang off the post.
Beniers stripped Konecny of the puck near the Seattle blueline and soloed the other way, beating Ersson under his left (glove) hand from the left circle at 10:37. The goal was unassisted.
Morgan Geekie set up John Hayden at the doorstep with a little more than six minutes left in the game. At 14:11, the Flyers made it 6-2. A Cates shot attempt bounced off the end boards right out to Konecny in front and he put it home. Cates got the lone assist.
Bellows was given space to fire off a rising shot from the left circle, looking for the short side. Grubauer blockered it away. At 17:21, Ersson gloved down a point shot by Carsen Soucy.
With exactly 1:00 to go, Hayes put a left circle shot ont. On the next shift, DeAngelo put a point shot on net: just the 19th of the game for Philadelphia.
A scrum broke out in the Seattle end with 0.6 seconds on the clock.
Third period shots on goal were 10-9 Seattle. Shot attempts were 22-20 Seattle. Scoring chances were 9-9. High danger chances were 3-3. Final faceoffs were 36-21 Flyers (61 percent). Final turnovers were 13 for the Flyers (five giveaways, eight takeaways by Seattle) and 20 for Seattle (11 Flyers takeaways, 9 Seattle giveaways).