Lightning 4, Flyers 1: A disastrous second period leads to another Flyers loss

Dec 2, 2022 - 2:48 AM

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C’mon, what were you expecting? The Flyers fell to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Philadelphia tonight by a score of 4-1, dropping them to 8-11-5 on the season, and back on the path after a brief respite from losing in their win over the Islanders on Tuesday. Carter Hart took the loss, allowing 4 goals on 27 shots.

The Flyers have a pretty tough stretch for the first week of December, following this game with matches against the first-place(?!) New Jersey Devils, the Colorado Avalanche, the Washington Capitals, and the Vegas Golden Knights. If you thought that the twelfth month of 2022 would be much different than the eleventh, based on tonight and that schedule, it seems unlikely.

First period

The Flyers opened ‘80s night with an excellent Carter Hart save on the first Lightning shot of the game, stopping Alex Killorn on a gaping net. They’d go to the penalty kill a few minutes later though, as Travis Sanheim took down Brayden Point in front of Hart. The Lightning power play went to work pretty quickly and eventually, Nicholas Paul beat Hart on a very nice pass from Corey Perry from behind the net. The Flyers best scoring chance of the period came on…that’s right, a breakaway from Nic Deslauriers with about three minutes left. They would finish the period with a surprising lead in all-strength shots at 9-7 but a deficit on the scoreboard.

Second period

The second period is where this started to look like a game between the 2022-23 Philadelphia Flyers that we’ve come to know over the last 12-ish games and one of the best teams in the league. The Lightning scored their second around 8 minutes into the period, another from Nick Paul off a pass from below the goal line. Despite a nice save on a breakaway, Hart would allow a third goal, this time from New Jersey native Ross Colton with just 3.4 seconds left on the clock.

Tampa creamed the Flyers in any and all shot metrics. The had 2 shots and allowed 17. Attempted 5 and allowed 32 attempts. Possibly the Flyers worst period of the season, and that’s saying something.

Third period

The third period brought us more misery, but this time in a whole different category. As much as there’s been to wring hands over, there’s always been the “at least Carter Hart is good” and “well it wasn’t Carter Hart’s fault.” The Lightning’s fourth goal, scored by Ian Cole on a dump-in from center ice, was most definitely Hart’s fault.

The lone Flyers goal came with the game all but out of reach. After an acrobatic keep by Tony DeAngelo, Travis Sanheim wired a cross-ice pass to Travis Konecny who found twine above Andrei Vasilevskiy’s glove, giving the masochistic Flyers fans still in the building something to cheer for. By the time the final horn put us all out of our misery, the Lightning had outshot the Flyers 23-18, but out-attempted them 51-35 and beat them in high-danger scoring chances 14-1.

*All stats via Natural Stattrick and hockey-reference.com.