After absorbing a lopsided loss in an outdoor game Saturday, the Philadelphia Flyers will head back indoors for Wednesday’s contest versus the host Chicago Blackhawks.
Still in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff chase, the Flyers steadfastly are against overemphasizing falling short to the New Jersey Devils amid the pageantry of the NHL Stadium Series at East Rutherford, N.J.
“We lose the game, we move by it,” Philadelphia coach John Tortorella said. “It’s only one game. You have to be really careful here not to make it into more of a thing than just losing a game.”
Philadelphia, which dropped a 6-3 decision to New Jersey, remains in third place in the Metropolitan Division with eight weeks left in the regular season.
“It’s the hardest stretch in the season to get wins, to get points,” Flyers defenseman Marc Staal said. “We’ve had a high standard of compete and discipline throughout the year, but now it becomes even more amplified. We’ve got to be better than our last game and we’ve got to keep pushing here.”
Owen Tippett scored twice, defenseman Nick Seeler also tallied and Travis Konecny had two assists for Philadelphia.
Konecny enters Wednesday’s contest on a six-game point streak, including three consecutive multi-point efforts.
Chicago was routed 6-3 at Carolina on Monday in its only road game of February. The Blackhawks yielded the first four goals of the night en route to suffering their 21st consecutive defeat (0-20-1) away from the United Center.
“When you get a team like (Carolina) that just comes at you, you get caught if you overthink it,” said Chicago’s Nick Foligno, who scored his team’s first goal. “You look slow, you look lethargic. That’s what happened. Then all of a sudden in the third, where we said, ‘Let’s forget about it and go play,’ our game comes to life because of it.”
Chicago, which owns an NHL-low 33 points, is working to make strides with a young core.
“This is just a year of lessons,” Foligno said. “It (stinks) saying that, but we’re going to have to go through it as a group.”
On the bright side: Rookie leading scorer Connor Bedard continues to surge. Bedard recorded a goal and two assists against the Hurricanes and has six points (two goals, four assists) over a three-game point streak following his return from a 14-game absence with a fractured jaw.
Foligno felt Bedard “started to turn it on” as he felt the game going south for Chicago.
“He started to want to make a difference,” Foligno added, “and when he does that, he’s as special as anybody in this league.”
Injury-plagued for much of the season, the Blackhawks welcomed forward Anthony Beauvillier back from an 18-game absence due to a broken wrist.
Tortorella said the Chicago game “scares the (crud) out of me.” All the more reason, he said, that “we’re not going to do the (postseason) math right now with 25, 26 games left. We don’t operate that way.”
The teams split the season series in 2022-23, with each winning on the other’s home ice.
–Field Level Media
