Positives and negatives from the Flyers’ loss to the Senators — and one player is both

Flyers coach John Tortorella liked his team’s game in Saturday’s loss to the Colorado Avalanche. He could not say the same following Sunday’s 5-3 loss to the Ottawa Senators.

“There’s not many positives in my mind right now after losing a game like that,” he said. “Wasn’t a good game.”

It’s a fair assessment for a team sitting in a playoff spot that lost to a squad mired at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. But, as Tortorella said, the Senators do have a skilled group and are not to be taken too lightly.

Unlike the game against the Avalanche, the Flyers were the team that came out a bit flat. But they weathered the storm and took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission and a 3-1 lead with 9 minutes, 10 seconds left in the second period. That should have set them up for a win; instead, the Senators roared back with four straight goals.

Although the bench boss said there were not too many positives, it’s fair to say there were a few. Here are two positives and two negatives from the loss to the Senators.

The Flyers skated in Game No. 46 and Egor Zamula had been a healthy scratch for eight of those. Some of those were warranted as the young blueliner was making big-time mistakes, not moving the puck quickly, and struggling in his game.

But since his last healthy scratch, Dec. 21 against the Nashville Predators, Zamula has been a mainstay.

He has made it increasingly more and more difficult for Tortorella to remove him from the lineup. So much so that since the Flyers added defenseman Jamie Drysdale via trade, the team has been skating with seven defensemen because as Tortorella mentioned, no one on the blue line deserved to be taken out.

» READ MORE: Flyers fall to Senators as Claude Giroux and Zack MacEwen score for Ottawa

Zamula continues to state his case offensively for staying in. He entered the contest with three career goals and nearly doubled it with a pair. His first was probably one of the oddest goals you’ll ever see as Senators netminder Mads Søgaard thought he had eaten up the Joel Farabee shot. Nope. Instead, it went out to the left half-wall where Zamula collected it and scored into the open net on the power play.

“That was one of the weirder goals I think I’ve ever seen in my career,” Farabee said. “When I shot it I actually had no idea where it was and then I saw Z skating to the far side. Yeah, just a weird, weird, weird goal. Not really sure, but obviously we’ll take it.”

Zamula then scored again, this time from the top of the circles. But the key to this goal was the puck retrieval. On a dump-in at the blue line, Cam Atkinson squeezed Ottawa defenseman Artem Zub off the puck and chipped it up the boards to Farabee, who fed Zamula at the point.

The question raised to Zamula was about how comfortable he has been looking at the blue line on the power play. But the 23-year-old defenseman instead shouldered the blame for the loss.

“I had a mistake today on the blue line. I think it was a pretty bad mistake for me, for my team, too, because Ottawa started playing better after my mistake,” he said.

Zamula misplayed a pass from Ryan Poehling at the Senators’ blue line, allowing former Flyers forward Zack MacEwen to break out and get the Senators on the board. It was a mistake the defenseman has not made too often in recent games, but the loss was not entirely on his shoulders.

Farabee has been on a heater with nine points (five goals, four assists) during a six-game point streak. Sunday, he not only notched assists on each of Zamula’s goals but added a tally of his own on the power play.

“I’m just going out there and playing,” Farabee said. “I don’t think I’m thinking too much about what’s going on. I just try to come to the rink every day and just do the same thing, help the team however I can win.”

The significance of the goal was even larger as the power play is finally clicking. Since three consecutive games when the team went 0-for-4 in each as the calendar turned to 2024, the Flyers are 8-for-28 in their last nine games. Translation: 28.6% effectiveness.

They’re still mired at the bottom — technically No. 31 now at 13.3% for the season — but power plays become critical now as the playoff push begins. Sunday marked the first time the Flyers have scored two on the man advantage in a game since Nov. 30.

The Farabee goal also showcased a new element by Zamula as the defenseman walked the line to create space for the forward to fire the puck on the net.

“Just the way he’s grown into the player he is now, he’s so confident with the puck,” Farabee said. “He moves the line really well. On my goal, he walks the line so far that it drags everyone over and gives me a lane to shoot. So, he creates all that ice with how long he is and how he plays. He’s only going to get better and better.”

The Flyers just weren’t able to establish long stretches of zone time against the Senators. According to Natural Stat Trick, at five-on-five, the Senators had 58.75% of the shot attempts.

“We didn’t make enough plays,” Tortorella said. “We did not establish forechecking. We were just one and done. The second half of the game, we were just one and done. They generated so much momentum off of their goals; once they scored, they generated momentum.”

Compared to the Flyers, the Senators were able to sustain pressure as they forechecked and beat the hosts to pucks.

Ottawa made it a 3-2 game off a scramble in front that initially allowed them time to send two guys to the net front all alone. The Flyers, who seemed to struggle with defensive zone coverage throughout the game, finally got back, but not before Sam Ersson made two fantastic saves, including a toe stop on Tim Stützle on the doorstep.

“It’s kind of those scrum situations, a little bit, maybe tough bounces,” said Ersson, who made 29 saves. “For me, I’ve got to find a way to make a save on at least one of those. We needed it today. And, unfortunately, it went in and we didn’t find a way to win.”

Former Flyers captain Claude Giroux also notched a goal from in tight. After the Senators got into the offensive zone, put a shot on net, recovered the puck, and quickly cycled, Brady Tkachuk curled out of the corner and put the puck toward the net. It ended up going off Sean Couturier and right to Giroux in front for the easy goal.

“I thought I had it, [but] it was in my skate,” Couturier said. “Then next thing you know, it just popped to him. ... Just got caught on the wrong side of the puck.”