Sunday, February 13, 2011
Posted: 5:33 p.m.Updated: 7:43 p.m.
By Tim PanaccioCSNPhilly.com
BOX SCORE
You could give the goalie major props.
Jonathan Quick was nothing short of sensational Sunday for the L.A. Kings, stoning the Flyers with 40 saves, while shutting them out, 1-0.
Thats two shutout losses for the Flyers over five games. Five shutouts against this season.
The Flyers are in a goal drought, even if they dont want to admit it.
Eights goals in five games? Thats a legit drought for the third highest-scoring club in the National Hockey League.
NHL
Which is one reason why coach Peter Laviolette shuffled his lines the past two games and continued to shuffle them against L.A. in an effort to generate quality scoring chances.
We havent generated as many chances as Id like, Laviolette said. It wasnt a long term plan. More of giving it a different look and a different feel.
Just trying to attack more offensively. We probably got close to 20 quality chances tonight, but we just couldnt solve the goaltender.
Quick ate one shot up after another as the Kings ran their own streak to 7-0-2 in their last nine games. Terry Murrays club played hard defensively and have now given up three goals or less in 15 straight games.
Our execution wasnt the best today, but we threw a lot of puck on net, Danny Briere said. We did a good job going to the net. They have big defensemen. Theyre physical. We battled. For some reason, we couldnt find the loose pucks.
Quick was good when he had to make big saves. Besides our execution, we competed, we worked hard. Were disappointed with the outcome. But if we play that way, were gonna win most of these games.
Eight goals over five games wont get you many wins unless youre the team posting the shutouts.
I dont think the chances were an issue tonightmaybe against Carolina, Briere countered. Maybe against Dallas. I thought today, as far as creating chances, we made a step in the right direction. Offensively, I thought it was a better game than the last two.
Its gonna happen sometimes. Youre going to hit a hot goalie. These guys play defense. You got to keep your head up and keep going at it.
We speculated last week that perhaps the reason for Laviolette changing up his lines against Carolina may have been to re-sharpen his forwards focus on the offensive side of things.
In this one, Claude Giroux centered Mike Richards and Jeff Carter.
We never played together, Giroux said. Its going to take more than one game to get chemistry together. I dont think we played bad. We obviously should have played better.
Theres more. Andreas Nodl was centering James van Riemsdyk and Dan Carcillo.
We didnt play a bad game, Giruox said. We generated a lot of offense and defensively, we were pretty solid. Except for that one play they scored, we played a pretty solid game.
Quick got a 1-0 lead in the opening 17 seconds of the second period and made it last.
They created a lot of stuff in front, Quick said. They are a good team and good at scoring goals, and that is one of the ways they go about it. As a team we were prepared for that and everything worked out.
Early on, Quick made a couple of good pad stops, plus help from the left post on Chris Prongers point drive in the opening minutes. Three chances really stood out for the Flyers in a scoreless first period.
First, Quick was able to cover up in the pain with Ville Leino trying to jab the puck under him. Then, Richards stripped Anze Kopitar of the puck coming out of his own end during a Kings power play, but Quick didnt bite on Richards fake, and made a pad stop.
Soon after, Quick was able to smother a shot from Scott Hartnell that the Flyer forward failed to lift over him during a crease scrum.
We had a number of great chancesA couple he didnt even know he stopped, Pronger said.
On the power play, things were very different as the Flyers had just two shots on four power play opportunities. That has to get a lot better. Wheres the execution there?
Whats missing? Consistency, Pronger said.
Within each period, we had moments where we dominated and moments where we didnt, Pronger said. Again, the game is 60 minutes. We got to be prepared to play 60 minutes.
Although Sergei Bobrovsky wasnt Quicks equal, he played well with 24 saves. A turnover was the difference on the board.
Richards lost the puck to Wayne Simmonds behind his own net to start the second period. Before anyone could react, Anze Kopitar had centered into the slot where Drew Doughty rifled the puck past an unsuspecting Bobrovsky at 17 seconds.
The puck was deflected and went into the five-hole, Bobrovsky said.
Although the Flyers generated chances that period, they didnt do so on the power play. They couldnt get cleanly into the offensive zone, could not get open point shots, and had no sustained pressure.
Hence, no goals.
Youre not going to score five goals each game for 82 games, Giroux said. Obviously, youre going to have ups and downs. Weve been able to find ways to win games even when we dont score a lot of goals.
Tonight was an example of playing a great game but we still didnt get that win. Their goalie played well.
E-mail Tim Panaccio at tpanotch@comcast.net