Flyers Report Card: Ersson Shines Despite the Loss

The Philadelphia Flyers lost a heartbreaker at the horn to the Utah Hockey Club in overtime Tuesday night.

Utah’s night was powered by Dylan Guenther’s two-goal, three-point night, while Sam Ersson’s stellar performance kept the Flyers in the game.

The Flyers ended their scoreless streak at 182 minutes and 17 seconds with goals from Rodrigo Abols and Tyson Foerster Tuesday night. Sean Coutierier’s feed on Foerster’s score was a brief moment of brilliance in what was a disappointing night for the Flyers, both offensively and defensively.

Like always, Tuesday night saw some good and some bad performances by the Flyers. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Sam Ersson: A-

Sam Ersson was a win away from an A+. Regardless, Ersson deserves his flowers for his performance Tuesday night.

Despite leading for a good portion of Tuesday’s game, the Flyers did not play a very good game. The offense scored goals; two goals are insufficient to help you win. The defense allowed way too many high-danger chances, yet Sam Ersson kept the Flyers alive and gave them a chance, quite literally, until the final horn.

Ersson had a career-high 39 saves in the loss and made a handful of impressive stops.

Yes, the Flyers lost. Yes, Ersson will leave the game with three goals against him. Ersson played out of his mind Tuesday night. The score would have been A LOT uglier if he were not in goal.

The Fourth Line: A

The Flyers’ forward lines were shaken up ahead of Tuesday’s game in Utah. The Flyers’ fourth line, Nicolas Deslauriers-Rodrigo Abols-Jacob Gaucher, made the most of their minutes Tuesday.

Rodrigo Abols scored his first career NHL point and goal with his game-opening score. Abols has been playing hard since his call-up to the Flyers–that was a much-deserved goal for the 29-year-old rookie.

Nicolas Deslauriers was activated off the IR ahead of the game and drew into the lineup for the first time since November 9th. Would it shock you if I told you Deslauriers got into a heavyweight tilt in his first game back? Well, it shouldn’t. Deslauriers took down Liam O’Brian of Utah and gave the Flyers a nice spark.

Though he has yet to score a point, Jacob Gaucher has looked like he belongs in the NHL. He looked like he had the assist on Abols’ goal, but it was later taken off, with only Travis Sanheim getting the assist.

The Offense: C

Yes, they did the most critical thing: ended the scoreless streak. Getting the monkey off the back and getting that first goal early in the game was a great start. However, it would not get much better than that.

The Flyers scored two goals Tuesday night, which is quite pitiful when you are getting the night that Sam Ersson had in goal. Two goals are not enough. Even worse for the Flyers, they only had 20 shots on goal. That is literally less than half of the shots produced by Utah (42).

They ended the drought, which is good, but other than that, there is no way to spin it differently than another slow night for the Flyers’ offense.

The Defense: D

It’s sort of the same thing as the offense, just in terms of the defense. Allowing two goals in regulation is not bad. Is it going to guarantee a win? No, not at all, but it certainly gives you a good chance.

However, I am not sure you can credit the defense for only two goals against in regulation. That all should go to Ersson. Utah fired off 42 shots on the Flyers’ netminder, including overtime. You cannot tell me that the Flyers can honestly look at that number, then look at Ersson and say that they did everything they could to help him out Tuesday.

With the highest-scoring team in the Eastern Conference coming to town on Thursday, the Flyers will need to tighten up defensively to give themselves a chance at a win.