Flyers lose fourth in a row, falling 6-2 to Vancouver Canucks

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — For the third game in a row, speed forced sloppiness out of the Flyers, and they fell, 6-2, to the Vancouver Canucks for their fourth straight loss.

Through the first period, the Canucks beat the Flyers to loose pucks, intercepted their passes, and turned Flyers rebounds the other way. While the Canucks’ execution wasn’t pristine, they still managed to control the pace of the first period.

Even so, the opening period was an improvement over the Flyers’ last first period, against the Seattle Kraken. While they had little offensive zone time, they at least were getting shots on goal. After Anthony Beauvillier capitalized on a Travis Sanheim giveaway to score, Scott Laughton tied it on the Flyers’ eighth shot on goal.

The Flyers caught up to the pace but fell behind on the scoreboard in the second. Andrei Kuzmenko beat the Flyers with a backdoor goal scored on an almost-open net. Beauvillier then notched his second goal four seconds into the game’s first power play. The Flyers responded quickly on their own power play when Morgan Frost knocked in a loose puck.

However, they still felt they were in it and were proud of the way they responded to the weak first.

“I just thought there was no quit,” Travis Konecny said. “You can look at the score, how it ended up. It’s not a reflection of the game. We worked really hard and believed in ourselves.”

In the third, the Flyers finally flipped momentum their way. But when the Canucks eventually gained control of the puck, Phillip Di Giuseppe scored on a loose puck under Carter Hart’s pad.

The Flyers pulled Hart in the final minutes and yielded two empty-net goals.

“We’ve got to find a way here to even up this road trip and continue to have belief,” said Laughton, the de facto captain. “I know a lot of guys do, and we’ll keep pushing.”

After play stopped following Laughton’s goal, defenseman Justin Braun chased down the officials to grab the puck. Laughton had scored by deflecting Braun’s shot. The point was Braun’s first of the season and first since May 5, 2022.

After re-signing with the Flyers this season, Braun found himself shifted to a seventh-defenseman role amid the Flyers’ youth movement. Since the turn of the year, he’s played just four games while 22-year-old Cam York has moved into a more prominent role. While Braun hadn’t scored, he’s contributed with his veteran presence and knowledge.

That’s why coach John Tortorella decided to put Braun back in the lineup as a seventh defenseman. Scoring may have been unexpected, but Braun’s assist kept the game tied going into the second period despite a sloppy first.

The team was excited to see Braun score, especially when they thought he recorded the goal.

“I was going to leave it to Brauner, to be honest,” said Laughton, who tipped it in. “Let him have it. But I guess they changed it over.”

In his first NHL game, Canucks goalie Arturs Silovs finished with a lowly 0.815 save percentage. The 21-year-old had played just 46 AHL games before being called up to debut against the New York Rangers. He faced 27 shots and let in five goals.

So when the Flyers got a chance at him, they peppered him with as many shots as possible. Luckily for Silovs, the Flyers had difficulty getting into the offensive zone for the first half of the game. Even with many of their shots limited to the perimeter, with a rookie in goal, it was a solid strategy for a team that couldn’t take control of the game.

But after 27 shots, Silovs had let in only two goals. And after 10 more, he still stood strong, earning his first NHL win.

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After a close study of his own game over the last few months, Konecny knows exactly what he looks like when shots are going in versus when bounces aren’t going his own way. As expected, the longer his scoring drought lasted, the more he started to drift to the perimeter. But after scoring two garbage-time goals last game, both created by his effort to get to the dirty areas of the ice, he looked more like the Konecny of the 13-game scoring streak.

He worked to funnel toward the net instead of away, and he didn’t hesitate to shoot when he had the puck on his stick. While none went in, he led the game in shots on goal with seven.

Konecny’s efforts also paid off in other ways. His breakaway shot on the penalty kill helped run out the clock on the Canucks’ second power play. And his own power play shot in the second helped set up Frost’s goal.

The Flyers head to Calgary to play the Flames on Monday. (4 p.m. ET, NBCSP)