Flyers takeaways: Strong debut for Helge Grans, but Orange and Black plagued by ‘stupid stuff’ vs. Avalanche

A few weeks ago, as his team struggled to find its game, Flyers coach John Tortorella was asked if he believes in the sandwich philosophy of two positives and a negative.

“I don’t believe in that [expletive],” he said in the bowels of Boston’s building. “Everybody’s asking, I don’t believe in [it]. No, I don’t. I let the tape talk to me.”

The Flyers won that night against the Bruins and then five of their next eight, with one of the four losses coming in a shootout. But the team’s three-game winning streak and five-game point streak was snapped Monday night with a 3-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.

Although the bench boss will watch the tape, this one still had two positives and a negative.

Trailing 3-0 against the Avalanche, it would have been easy to pack up the pucks and turn the page to the visiting Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday (7:30 p.m., NBCSP, TNT, Max). But this Flyers squad tends to live by The Goonies’ motto of “never say die.” And while the comeback wasn’t completed, they certainly tried.

Joel Farabee’s block with 8 minutes, 54 seconds left in the game seemed to spark the Flyers. Farabee stepped in front of a Josh Manson shot and went off the ice in pain but the Flyers found their legs.

After that block, the Flyers had 19 shot attempts, including goals by Owen Tippett and Tyson Foerster. During that stretch, the Avalanche had just seven shot attempts.

“We put ourselves in a chance to win the game and that’s all you can ask,” said forward Travis Konecny, who set up Tippett to extend his point streak to seven games. “It didn’t play out the way we wanted it to maybe the first half of the game, but we stuck with it. We’ve been doing the right things and starting to get the results. Tonight we didn’t get it.”

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Speaking after the game on Monday, Tortorella said he respects that his team “kept on playing” but that the Avalanche are “an elite team” and “that’s what we want to get to.”

The Avalanche won the Stanley Cup two years ago — with current Flyers defenseman Erik Johnson — and features players like Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen. It was a good test.

“I think as of late we’re a confident group in here and we know what works,” Tippett said. “I think it took us a while to get to our game, but I think once we started to kind of play down there and put pressure on them, you can kind of see what happened. It’s a shame there wasn’t one more.”

“A lot of the game I liked as we kept going, but ... we do stupid stuff,” Tortorella said postgame. “It’s so aggravating. The stuff that we do that should be out of our game. That’s what aggravates me.”

Earlier in his answer, Tortorella brought up two penalties in the game. Foerster was called for high-sticking, with the Flyers on the power play in the first period. The other was a high-sticking penalty by Bobby Brink, during a four-minute power play.

Philly handed Colorado and its stars four power plays and they cashed in on one. Makar scored one of his two goals with the man advantage to make it 2-0 before Casey Mittlestadt made it 3-0 in the third period.

“I think we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit,” Tippett said. “They’re a quick team and they transition fast. I think we gave them a little more than we should have and found ourselves behind.”

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Konecny shouldered the blame for Makar’s first goal.

“Bad read, I’m puck-watching,” Konecny said. “And it’s frustrating to look at the end of the game and it’s a one-goal game.”

The Avalanche defenseman trailed the play and took a pass from MacKinnon before scoring from above the circles. On the play, Konecny skated toward MacKinnon before the pass, despite Sean Couturier already shadowing his fellow center.

“Yeah, it’s dumb,” Tortorella said. “Just left the best player in the world to go chase the puck. If we’re going to get over the hump, that can’t happen, not from a guy that we’re depending on.”

Skating in his first NHL game, Helge Grans did not look like a newbie.

He may have had chills as he walked out of the tunnel for the first time but he was red hot on the ice. With his mom and dad in the stands — they happened to be on vacation and visiting their son when he got the call he was going to “The Show” — Grans skated 16:11, blocked two shots, had three shot attempts, and registered his first point.

As for the debut point, he put the shot on goal that Brink jabbed at and Foerster later knocked in to make it a one-goal game.

“He was good,” Tippett said. “He’s obviously solid. We know what he’s like and we got a good look at him in camp. He’s been around for a while. You can tell he’s pretty poised and in control back there. Obviously, a big guy (6-foot-4, 205 pounds), he’s up to his size. He was solid. Obviously good to see him get an assist and I’m happy for him.”

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Grans, 22, only played 3:02 in the first period but had more than six minutes in each of the next two periods. In the first period, he got a good shot off from the high slot on a pass from Matvei Michkov and put another one on from 10 feet out as he dropped down from the point in the second.

The Swedish defenseman started the game with Egor Zamula but was often on the same pairing with top defenseman Travis Sanheim as the game wore on; Zamula left the game with just over 15 minutes remaining.

According to Natural Stat Trick, at five-on-five, Grans tied Brink for first on the team with a Corsi For Percentage of 62.50% and tied Tippett for the best at any strength (60.53%). The Flyers also had eight high-danger chances when he was on the ice, compared to two for the Avalanche, and a 15-6 shot differential.

“He looks good,” Konecny said. “Small sample size. I’ve seen him in camp a lot. He looks great. And tonight, from what I saw, he looks pretty comfortable for his first NHL game. So, really exciting.”