Flyers Lament Lack of Finishing Touch After Disappointing Loss to Wild

Though it has been an issue all season long, a lack of a finishing touch finally directly cost the Philadelphia Flyers a game, as fine margins were all the difference in Tuesday night's 4-2 loss to the visiting Minnesota Wild.

The Wild, widely regarded as a Stanley Cup contender with the likes of Jesper Wallstedt, Kirill Kaprizov, Quinn Hughes, and Matt Boldy in their ranks, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period.

Boldy eluded defensive zone coverage and placed one past Dan Vladar from the slot, and 31 seconds later, Michael McCarron snuck behind Noah Cates and Cam York, depositing from close range to double the Wild lead to 2-0.

The Flyers had their chances throughout, though. Porter Martone had a golden one-timer opportunity that he clanged off the outside post on the power play, and later in the game, Travis Konecny skied a gorgeous feed from Denver Barkey on a 2-on-1 rush.

Such misses frustrated Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet, who lamented the team's porous finishing touch after the game.

"For me, it's the missed chances. We have 23 missed opportunities. We had nine or 10 scoring chances where we missed the net," Tocchet stewed. "We got to hit the net. We have two empty nets, we don't score there. Those are the difference-makers."

Forward Trevor Zegras, who had narrowly missed a chance in the game's opening moments, agreed with his head coach.

"We got to start, myself included, finishing some chances and giving ourselves a better chance earlier in the game," Zegras added before studying a stat sheet at the podium. "We definitely had our looks, we had our chances. I don't know what the shots were. I felt like we had some good sustained O-zone time for a lot of the second, most of the third. Probably put a couple of those home, it's a different game, right?"

The silver lining for the Flyers is that they did at least get some offensive contributions from players who badly needed to chip in.

While Joel Eriksson Ek tallied less than a minute into the middle frame to make it 3-0, Tyson Foerster scored for just the third time this season, deflecting a long-range Jamie Drysdale shot in traffic to put the Flyers on the board at 3-1 late in the period.

Forward Denver Barkey slammed home his first of the season on the power play less than two minutes into the third, cleanly receiving a Porter Martone pass and ripping one to the near side over Wallstedt's shoulder to make it 3-2.

Barkey, who has impressed with his work in the bumper position on the power play, continues to surge. Four of his six points this season have come within the last seven games.

"Barks does a hell of a job in the middle supporting, which is honestly the biggest difference [on the power play] I've seen, personally," Zegras said. "Any 50/50 battle, he's right there to help and support. He's such a smart player, and he's able to get it to that next guy, which just relieves a lot of pressure. He had a big goal for us tonight, which was great."

Despite out-shooting the Wild 11-4 in the third period and pushing for the 18 minutes that followed Barkey's goal, Danila Yurov sanded away the game with an empty-netter to secure the 4-2 final.

It's a common theme for the Flyers this season, not playing a full 60 minutes, or as Barkey said after the game, starting "on time". As bad as the start of the season has been, the Flyers could have been able to hand their hats on wins against teams like Buffalo, Colorado, Utah, Ottawa, and Minnesota, but they spotted the Wild a massive lead, one that proved insurmountable in the end.

The story was the same in the 4-3 overtime loss to Columbus last week, and the 5-4 loss to Anaheim that preceded it.

Like the Flyers have had their chances to score in games, they have had their chances to make real gains out of the hole they dug themselves at the beginning of the year when they started winless through nine.

Instead, they drop another winnable game due to simple mistakes that for years they have not corrected.