Flyers takeaways: Puck possession and turnover woes resurface in loss to Hurricanes

John Tortorella summed up Wednesday night’s matchup with Carolina well: “They spanked us in the third.”

For the first 40 minutes, for the most part, the Flyers were skating with the Hurricanes. They headed into the third period tied at 1. But, like in their first meeting, it fell apart late — albeit this time it was across the entire final 20 minutes and not in the waning seconds of regulation.

What occurred in the final frame of the 4-1 loss, when the Hurricanes put up a hat trick, is a microcosm of how things have gone this season for the Flyers.

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The Flyers have struggled this season with maintaining control of the puck, either when it’s already on their sticks or when they are trying to get it back. The term “one-and-done” has been used way too often to describe the Flyers’ offense this season — and let’s not even talk about how “disconnected” and “disjointed” they have been.

Despite recently winning seven of 11, the Flyers returned to their poor habits Wednesday. It was the opposite of last week’s win over the Ottawa Senators when they did not play well for 40 minutes and stepped it up in the third period and overtime to win.

This time they skated with the Hurricanes for 40 and despite a lot of one-and-dones and poor shot selection, they went into the third period tied. Games don’t have to be Picassos all the way through, but the third period looked more like a Jackson Pollack — and not in a good way.

The Flyers were out-chanced throughout the night, with the Hurricanes throwing 83 pucks toward the net, including 37 that hit the target. In the third period, the Orange and Black had seven shot attempts to the Hurricanes' 33.

It’s hard to score if you don’t have the puck.

Carolina’s 20th shot attempt of the period found the back of the net via Jack Roslovic to give the visitors a 4-1 lead. There were still 13 minutes, 3 seconds left in regulation, giving the Flyers time to rally. Instead, the Hurricanes had 13 shot attempts in the final minutes, with the Flyers managing just five, including three shots on goal.

“They just play fast. I think they’re all connected, that’s the biggest thing,” forward Ryan Poehling said. “I feel like when you’re playing hockey teams, and the teams that are at their best are when the whole team’s clicking from the back end to the front end, and a 200-foot game, they make you work for everything you get, and I think that’s why they’re such a good team.”

According to NHL Edge, the Flyers entered the night below the league average (41.7%) for offensive-zone time at even strength (40.4%) and both the eye test and analytics will tell you they didn’t really spend much time in the offensive zone against Carolina. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Flyers struggled with puck possession as Natural Stat Trick now has them last in the NHL in Corsi For Percentage at 43.96% (they were fifth-worst entering the game at 45.14%).

“I think we, through this game, [became] a little disconnected,” defenseman Nick Seeler said. “I think we were getting pucks in and we were strong on our defensive blue line and their blue line and I thought we got away from that in the third and they capitalized.”

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In direct correlation, the Flyers had just four shots on goal in the final period with, as previously mentioned, three coming after they trailed by three. A shot by Anthony Richard came less than a minute after Roslovic scored. The next shot, by Travis Konecny, came 6:23 later. Joel Farabee registered the last Flyers shot of the game with 63 seconds left in regulation.

“I think we need to get some more shots and Torts said that between the second and third, don’t pass up any shots,” Seeler said. “I think that’ll transition well for us and getting more opportunities and more dirty goals, which we need.”

The Flyers started great, putting 11 shots on goalie Pyotr Kochetkov in the first period. But in the second period, they were back to just four shots while allowing the Hurricanes to put 10 on Ivan Fedotov; he stopped them all including a ridiculous desperation diving save on Sebastian Aho with 12 seconds left.

“They have opportunities, yeah,” Tortorella said of his team. “There’s opportunities. There’s some plays to be made. We just didn’t finish off plays. Thought our first period was good, and then we just couldn’t sustain.”

Dirty goals. Garbage goals. Whatever you prefer to call them, the Flyers need to drive to the net more and be around the blue paint. Look what happened in that Ottawa game when Bobby Brink crashed the net and had Richard’s initial shot go off him. Tyson Foerster poked in a loose puck in the crease as the Flyers cut it to a goal against the Colorado Avalanche — it’s also how he scored in the win against the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.

Five high-danger chances. That’s all the Flyers had at five-on-five against the Hurricanes, according to Natural Stat Trick. And none in the critical third period. They did have six in the first period, with four coming across three power-play opportunities — two by Matvei Michkov at the right post.

A lot of the issues Wednesday night for the Flyers were due to a regression in puck support. After playing like five-man units for the last couple of games, they were again playing disjointed — which led to turnovers. And every goal can be traced to a turnover.

“Even before the third period, we were too far away,” Tortorella said. “But the thing that bothers me the most, and I think it’s the biggest correction we have to make, is we have to manage the puck better in the neutral zone. That team there wins so many sword fights in the neutral zone, 50-50s and they have such good sticks. You think you’re going to get it past them? You think you’re going to skate by them one-on-one and they get you. [Ryan Poehling] turns it over, but we don’t have any puck support when he’s carrying the puck.

“The turnovers are what bother me. We spent a lot of time talking about it before the game, that we’re going to have to be clean through the neutral zone, and we are not good enough. We’re not good enough to play that type of game trying to beat people. We need to bring support over, make simple little plays and if we have no play, we need to get it in.”

The Flyers were battling uphill after conceding the opening goal just 30 seconds in. As TNT broke it down during its telecast, it started with a 50-50 battle Tortorella talked about in the neutral zone being lost when Jordan Staal chipped it over to Jordan Martinook to create a Hurricanes transition into the offensive zone.

Philly recovered the puck after Martinook put a shot on goal but, despite having numbers, Scott Laughton’s backhand breakout pass inside the blue line was picked off by Martinook. Laughton wasn’t credited with a giveaway, but the play led to Jalen Chatfield’s floater getting through as the Hurricanes created multiple screens in front of Fedotov.

After that goal, the line of Richard, Brink, and Laughton didn’t see the ice again until almost the nine-minute mark of the first period. Laughton got one penalty-killing shift during that benching but didn’t play the final 14:15 of the second period.

“Laughts turns it over the first shift of the game,” Tortorella said. “I need him to lead the way in what we’re trying to do against a good team like that. It’s not just that one, there were a couple of others within his game. ... I can’t have a Scotty Laughton just turn one over in the first shift after we just spent the whole meeting talking about it.”

The second goal was off a turnover also in the defensive zone. Erik Johnson went to play the puck up the boards as he was getting checked but the puck went right to Aho who got the goal. Tortorella didn’t lay the blame on the veteran defenseman as Owen Tippett “puts EJ in a tough spot” when he moved the puck to him.

But as Tortorella added, there was no one in orange and black there to get the puck as he moved it up the wall. “We have no puck support,” he said. “Like to see — [Fedotov] made some really good saves — I’d like to see a save there.”

The third goal followed a faceoff win by Staal, who then deflected the point shot by Dmitry Orlov. But the fourth goal by Roslovic was again off a giveaway.

“Our game just got away from us there in the third period,” Poehling said. “I thought we played a good first two periods, put ourselves in a good enough spot, and then just little mistakes that we all know that we need to be better at doing, myself included, obviously, with that fourth goal turning the puck over in the neutral zone.

“It’s just, I don’t know, things that we know better and are simple. So I think that we just got away from ourselves mentally, and that cost us tonight.”

Poehling, who scored the home team’s lone goal — his first of the year — got the puck in the Flyers’ end and tried to use his speed to skate through the Hurricanes. Instead, it was poked away by Aho, who found Roslovic as he went to the net. The pass went through a pair of Flyers and onto the stick of the Ohio native, who buried it past Fedotov.

It wasn’t marked as a takeaway or a giveaway on the official play-by-play, but across the full 60 minutes, the Flyers had a whopping 25 giveaways to just seven takeaways. Carolina was credited with 16 giveaways and seven takeaways.