Third Jerseys Debut in Flyers Loss

The Flyers looked good at least fashionably yesterday afternoon, taking the ice in their new retro orange third jerseys, but didn’t look so good in terms of play as they were beaten in overtime by Carolina, 3-2.  Outshooting the Flyers 30 – 26, the Hurricanes played well defensively thanks in part to the Flyers propensity to overpass in the offensive zone.  Too many times they neglected to shoot when in decent position and instead tried to make a pretty set-up.  Just get the puck on net when you’re in good shooting range.  Some early opportunities were lost with Jeff Carter missing on a breakaway and Mike Richards’ goal being called back because defensemen Matt Carle and Luca Sbisa both jumped on the ice to replace Ossi Vaananen, who came to the bench.  Sbisa was up but Carle didn’t think Sbisa saw Vaananen, so he jumped on.  Neither of them had anything to do with the goal but… (Just to digress for a moment, this reminded me of the Philadelphia Firebirds of the old North American Hockey League in the mid-1970s, whose coach would sometimes purposely put an extra player on the ice and, if they scored, would send the rest of the team off the bench to congratulate the scorer so the ref wouldn’t notice that there had been too many men on the ice. This was when it was permissible to clear the bench to celebrate a goal. It often worked! You gotta love minor league hockey.

Fashionably, the Flyers looked great in the orange third jerseys, a throwback to the 1970s.  Take a look below:

Jeff Carter scores to tie the game at 2.

 

Sergei Samsonov scores the winner in overtime.