SUNRISE, Fla. — After an impressive showing in a hotly-contested overtime loss at Tampa, followed by a lively practice on Friday, Flyers coach Dave Hakstol rewarded his club.
He cancelled the morning skate on Saturday.
That won’t happen again.
Hakstol’s club spent the first period in full retreat, allowing four goals in less than seven minutes as the Panthers, a team nowhere near as talented as the Lightning, ambushed the Flyers en route to a 7-1 thrashing at BB&T Center (see Instant Replay).
The Flyers held a players-only team meeting afterward.
“It’s Game 2, and you lose 7-1, I think we’d better have a little talk here,” Mark Streit said.
Play a top team tough one night, then look terrible against a lesser club the next. Sound familiar?
“For me, it’s tough to explain,” Streit said. “We had a really good game in Tampa against a really good team. Had a good start. Had a good 60 minutes. And got a point.
“Then tonight, it was like a different team out there. We've got to be ready to compete and skate.”
Goalie Steve Mason was beyond bad, allowing four goals on eight shots before Michal Neuvirth relieved him (see highlights).
“There’s no one to put this on except myself and I take full responsibility for the outcome of this game,” Mason said. “When your starting goaltender performs like that, it puts everyone behind the eight-ball right away.”
Three of the goals were directly on Mason. It was 3-0 in less than six minutes.
The game disintegrated into skirmishes, undisciplined play and a Flyers parade to the penalty box. Nine penalties for 23 minutes.
“We had a bad start and got scored on four times,” Jakub Voracek said. “It wasn’t a good game, they beat our asses.”
Voracek, always one to balance the bad with the good, found a silver lining.
“The only thing we did good was put a lot of pucks at the net,” he said.
Incredibly, the Flyers outshot Florida, 39-30. Yet only a handful — not even a half dozen — of shots were scoring quality on Roberto Luongo.
The Flyers' best scoring chances came during a penalty kill when Scott Laughton and Claude Giroux each had a shorthanded shot on Luongo.
What was unnerving here was the stark contrast between the two games. It looked so much like what you saw every other night last season under Craig Berube.
“I’m real disappointed — we’ll address the start, but [it's] not unnerving,” Hakstol said. “It shouldn’t be unnerving to anybody in the locker room. It should leave a pretty sour taste for everybody.”
The team meeting lasted about 10 minutes and was called by the leadership group.
“It wasn’t necessarily about the score, but the way we played,” Voracek explained. “I don’t think we should be [in] that situation to lose 7-1 in Game 2.
“It happened. We've got to make sure we get better [Sunday] and better Monday in the game.”
Hakstol said he had no issue with a team meeting this early into a season.
“The one thing that is absolute is that nobody is going to overreact,” he said. “You take this situation and deal with it for what it is. Deal with it honestly. Most of those dealings will take place in the locker room.”
So the road began in rose petals and ends in ashes with one point.
The Flyers’ home opener is Monday at the Wells Fargo Center against these same Panthers, so memories will be very fresh.
“It’s a good thing we don’t have a week off,” Voracek said.