It’s not the finish to the season the Flyers were aiming for after surprisingly making the Stanley Cup final last year. Finishing as the second seed in the Eastern Conference this year meant that the Flyers had high hopes of returning to the Cup final and winning their first Cup since 1975. Instead, they met the business end of a broom thanks to the Bruins and they’re left to wonder what exactly went wrong.
Don’t worry guys, we’ll take care of that.
1. Yes, the goaltending stunk
Let’s just point and laugh at the elephant in the room right now. Goaltending was terrible. Take a look at Brian Boucher’s numbers in this series.
5.26 goals against average, .846 save percentage, 12 goals allowed on 78 shots.
Those numbers are indefensible when breaking things down. Starting Sergei Bobrovsky in Game 4 was a move Peter Laviolette had to try to turn things around. Unfortunately for him, the series was already over with because the Flyers had a lot of other problems elsewhere on the ice on top of being terrible in goal. With no one having any confidence in anyone out there, it’s tough to come up with great performances in goal. Game 2 was the Flyers only real shot at a win and they still came up short in overtime. The other three losses weren’t even close.
2. But so did the defense
Philly’s defense was also to fault for their problems. We’ve yelled about how the Bruins plan of attack flustered the Flyers and made them run around wildly in their own end chasing after pucks and players all at once. Not having a healthy Chris Pronger to lead them did make a difference, but with the margin of defeat the Flyers were losing by it didn’t much matter. The Flyers defense being in the shape it was in caused a domino effect. All season long the Flyers goalies, regardless of who was in net, all put up similar numbers and relied on the guys in front of them to help make life easier. The Bruins figured out that by pressing the play and pressuring the Flyers in all zones that they’d get them to break down and leave openings all over the ice. They did that and it happened a lot to the tune of 20 goals in four games. Giving up an average of five goals per game isn’t winning anyone anything.
3. And the offense was brutal too
For as many goals as the Flyers were giving up to Boston, they had a problem of their own in that they couldn’t score either. Tim Thomas was outstanding through the series as the Flyers threw an average of just over 37 shots per game at him. 149 shots in all in the series and Thomas allowed just seven goals. That’t tough to keep up with but the Flyers needed their top players to flat out be better. Daniel Briere disappeared against Boston as did Mike Richards and Claude Giroux. James van Riemsdyk was the lone Flyer player to do anything in this series as he scored three of the team’s seven goals. You need the full team to put it together to beat the Bruins and the Flyers, instead, had one guy consistently bringing it. The Flyers had more than a few glaring issues in this series, but the lack of goals flew under the radar thanks how bad everything else went.
4. No character either
We’re not really big fans of putting a stake on intangible things like “heart” and “pride” but this Flyers team seemed to truly lack any of that against Boston. After getting pushed to the brink by Buffalo in the first round and showing some of that classic Flyers swagger, they had none of that against the Bruins. Instead, you had players taking dumb penalties (like Dan Carcillo did in Game 4), Chris Pronger lashing out in Game 1 while ending up a -3, and Scott Hartnell going after Zdeno Chara only to turtle after getting Chara’s ire showed that the Flyers just lacked something to unite them against a very motivated Bruins team. It’s not the brand of Flyers hockey we’ve gotten used to and perhaps next time around they’ll get a bit more out of Mike Richards as the captain.
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Philadelphia is clearly a very talented team. There’s a lot of offensive firepower here that’s young and itching to break out in the future. From Ville Leino, James van Riemsdyk, and Claude Giroux that’s a fantastic array of young talent. A healthy Jeff Carter may have helped out more against Boston and with Mike Richards there’s no reason to be concerned about those parts of the Flyers lineup. All eyes will be on GM Paul Holmgren in the offseason to see if he addresses the team’s goaltending situation. The Flyers have skated by with average to poor goalies for far too long and those issues came home to roost in this series.
