Postgame 5: Flyers Fall to Leafs

The Philadelphia Flyers finished a five-game road trip on Tuesday with a 7-2 loss against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena. The Flyers finished the road trip without a win (0-4-1) and are 1-10-1 over their last 12 games.

The Flyers got off to a decent start in the first period. But things went downhill rapidly by the end of the frame. From there, the rest of the game was slanted in Toronto's favor.

There was a scrum along the boards at 3:17 of the first period. Offsetting minor penalties were called on Calle Jarnkrok (boarding) and Nick Seeler (roughing) for two minutes of 4-on-4 play.

The Flyers went to the game's first power play at 5:34 as Nick Robertson was sent to the sin bin for tripping. Philadelphia generated one shot (Owen Tippett) during the 5-on-4.

With play back at 5-on-5, the Maple Leafs relaxed on what they thought would be an icing call. Instead the Flyers retrieved it and Ryan Poehling (8th of the season, fourth goal in the last eight games) scored from the top of the right circle off a nice feed from Jakob Pelletier. The secondary assist went to Rodrigo Abols for his work down low in forechecking the puck away from John Tavares.

Tavares (31st ) got some retribution to knot the score at 1-1 at the 10:37 mark. The play started with Noah Cates winning a defensive zone faceoff behind the net. However, Cam York succumbed immediately to puck pursuit by Bobby McMann. William Nylander's saucer pass out to Tavares became a goal then went in off Travis Sanheim.

The Flyers were nabbed with too many players on ice as they had a disjointed line change at 13:57. Matvei Michkov served the penalty. The Maple Leafs got another goal on a friendly bounce -- this time on the power play -- for a 2-1 lead. An attempted backdoor pass by Nylander (39th) pinballed off Nick Seeler's skate into the net. The assists went to Matthew Knies and Auston Matthews.

First period shots on goal were 10-3 Toronto. The Flyers sagged a little bit after the second deflection goal off one of their own players.

At 5:11, McMann (20th) converted a chance created by Nylander for a 3-1 lead for Toronto.

Shortly after the McMann goal, Couturier came close to cutting the gap to 3-2 but he hit the post. Through four minutes, the Flyers had two of three shots in the period but Toronto had the only goal and Philly had only four shots on net in 24 minutes of play.

The Flyers were guilty of a very casual line chance -- after a Michkov scoring chance in the offensive zone -- that soon resulted in another goal by Tavares (second of the game, 32nd of the season) at 7:49. Tavares skated through a seam to take a pass from Mitch Marner and score. The secondary assist went to Knies as Toronto opened a 4-1 lead.

Shots for the game were 18-6 Toronto through 11:30 of the second period. Meanwhile, York sat on the bench for the remainder of the game after the Tavares goal in the first period.

The score became 5-1 at 11:55 . The Flyers were guilty of puck watching as Tavares passed out to Nylander (40th of the second, second of the game) and the Swedish forward buried it past Samuel Ersson. The apples were collected by Tavares and McMann.

David Kampf (5th) scored a breakaway goal through the five hole for a 6-1 Toronto lead at 15:08. Jarnkrok and Steven Lorentz assisted.

Michkov retrieved a hard dump-in by Couturier. A Drysdale point shot was deflected into the net by Couturier (12th). It was a small payoff for two previous chances Couturier. Drysdale and Michkov had the assists on the goal that reduced the five-goal deficit to four. Couturier extended his point streak to four games (two goals, two assists).

The Leafs scored four times on their 13 shots on goal in the second period. Through 40 minutes, Toronto held a 23-11 advantage in shots.

Marner was unable to score on a between the legs shot and then took out Ersson in the blue paint. With the goalie down on the ice behind the net after initial contact by Marner and shove by Emil Andrae, Morgan Rielly tapped the puck into a vacant net at 4:42. Flyers head coach John Tortorella challenged for goaltender interference. The would-be goal was disallowed.

Max Domi (7th) won a foot race to a loose puck and scored one-on-one with Ersson for a 7-2 Toronto lead at 11:32. The assist went to Jake McCabe.

Ersson had to muddle through a "take one for the team" night in goal. He faced 30 shots, making 23 saves. Former Flyers netminder Anthony Stolarz stopped 17 of 19 shots. Third periods shots on goal were 8-7 Flyers.

FLYERS STARTING LINEUP

71 Tyson Foerster -27 Noah Cates - 10 Bobby Brink
39 Matvei Michkov - 14 Sean Couturier - 11 Travis Konecny
74 Owen Tippett - 25 Ryan Poehling - 22 Jakob Pelletier
44 Nicolas Deslauriers - 18 Rodrigo Abols - 15 Olle Lycksell

8 Cam York - 6 Travis Sanheim
24 Nick Seeler - 9 Jamie Drysdale
36 Emil Andrae - 5 Egor Zamula

33 Samuel Ersson
[82 Ivan Fedotov]

Scratches: 55 Rasmus Ristolainen (upper body), 19 Garnet Hathaway (upper body), 35 Aleksei Kolosov (healthy).

PP1: Konecny, Couturier, Brink, Foerster, Michkov
PP2: Sanheim, Tippett, Cates, Lycksell, Drysdale

TURNING POINT

The Flyers, as happened in Chicago on Sunday, were not nearly hard enough in puck battles as things slid downhill. Philly came out on the wrong end of a couple of bad bounces in the third period but it was self-made and became increasingly less competitive. By the time it was 3-1, the Leafs were in firm control.

POSTGAME 5 ("RAV4 THINGS" REVISITED)

1. Sarge on the other side: Longtime Flyers forward Scott Laughton squared off against his former team for the first time as a Leaf. He came close to a goal off a Domi feed early in the third period. Laughton skated 14:51 of ice time and was credited with five hits.

2. TK tries for three: Travis Konecny entered Tuesday's tilt with goals in back-to-back games after going without a tally since the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament. Against Toronto, Konency (17:56 TOI, four shots on goal) was unable to get on the scoresheet.

3. 20th for Tippett: Owen Tippett came into Tuesday's match stuck on 19 goals for the previous eight games. After this game, he is still one tally away from his third straight 20-plus goal season with the Flyers.

4. Power play drought : The Flyers were 0-for-30 on the power play through the first 13 games of March. They were 0-for-1 in Toronto. The Maple Leafs were 1-for-1, converting their lone power play of the match.

5. X-factor -- Between the pipes: Ersson was hung out to dry all night and also victimized by a couple of bad bounce. Barring an injury he was clearly going to go the distance in net regardless of the score.