Offense Oh Offense, Where Art Thou Offense?

The Philadelphia Flyers started off their November in Sunrise, Florida to take on the 3-2-3 (9 POINTS) Panthers Saturday night after finishing off a tough month of October with a 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Coming into the matchup against Florida, the Flyers held a record of 4-4-2 (10 POINTS), which is only good enough for 6^th place in the closely contested Metropolitan Division. After Ray Emery got the start in net for the Flyers the past four games, it was finally Steve Mason’s chance to turn things around, get his first win of the season, and take the Flyers over the .500 mark.

            With a not-so-ginormous crowd of around 5,000 people (50% or more being Flyer fans), the Flyers and the Panthers started the game off playing at a pretty equal level. The Panthers would eventually score first with a little under eleven minutes to play in the period off a slap shot by defenseman Willie Mitchell (1). As the period moved along, the Flyers produced some pretty good chances but could not get the equalizer before the horn sounded to end the 1^st period.

            A wise man once said, in order to score goals a team must shoot the puck. For a good portion of the 2^nd period, the Flyers were acting as if they had never heard this before. As the period came to an end, the team started to put the puck on net more; but could not get the puck past Panthers’ net minder Roberto Luongo. After two periods of play the scored remained 1-0 in favor of the Florida Panthers.

            In the 3^rd period, the Flyers were able to record more shots (18 in the period); but excellent play by Luongo made it near impossible for Philadelphia to tie the game up. With less than five minutes to play in the game, rookie defensemen Aaron Ekblad would make a Flyer comeback even more difficult by scoring his first NHL goal, giving the Panthers a 2-0 lead. The Flyers would finally get a goal on the board when Vincent Lecavalier scored his second goal of the season with only seven seconds left in the contest. This would be to little to late as the Flyers would fall 2-1 to the Florida Panthers, and finish winless in their Florida road trip.

            Although the Flyers could not pull off a win, no blame can be given to Steve Mason. He looked pretty good saving 28 of 30 shots that came his way. The only problem is, when you can’t get the offensive support you need, you cannot win the game. The Flyers look to turn things around on Tuesday night when the Edmonton Oilers come to town.