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You say the Flyers need to do more in front of the net in their playoff series against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Coach Ken Hitchcock thinks the emphasis should be elsewhere.
"The issue we need to improve on are things a lot farther back than around the goal," he said Friday as the Flyers prepared for Game 2 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series tonight. The Flyers lead the best-of-seven series, one game to none.
"We saw some things in our own team [in Game 1] we didn't like, and we
need to get better. They're coming a lot harder than people think. We need more
precision. A lot of our passes were tape-to-feet passes. We want to go one stick
to another stick. Timing and precision were off."
What Hitchcock was talking about was a better breakout against the 1-2-2 trap
the Leafs were using. Who would ever have imagined a Pat Quinn-coached team
employing a trap? It's virtual heresy in the Big T.O.
Let's not forget this is the same mighty Quinn who coached the 1979-80 Flyers
during their 35-game unbeaten streak, when they were whirling about the ice
with a wide-open offensive attack.
Quinn acknowledges he doesn't like the trap, but his most creative weapon -
center Mats Sundin - is sidelined with an undisclosed leg injury (the Toronto
Globe and Mail reported the injury was torn knee ligaments). Hence, the Leafs'
game plan changed. Quinn has used this defensive scheme intermittently this
season.
The Leafs are sending one forechecker in, then clogging up everything from the
Flyers' blue line into the neutral zone. Hitchcock spent some time the last
two days countering the trap.
"The thing is, a lot of times our forward was drifting too much to the
puck side and we need a guy to be wide and get him the puck, so we have more
time," Flyers defenseman Marcus Ragnarsson said. "What was happening
was [we would] get the puck up to a forward and he was skating right into traffic.
If we had a guy wide, he'd be set.
"What was happening, we had the defenseman in the corner [who would] give
the puck off to the tracker. Then the wide winger would come across, too. Now
we're all on half the ice coming up, and you have eight or nine guys [bunched
up] there. We need one forward wide to skate."
The team watched some tape of what they were doing and what Toronto was doing.
Obviously, the Leafs look very different now than they did months ago.
"Last year and even at the beginning of this season, they would come hard
with two guys on your defensemen," Ragnarsson said. "We did a good
job getting the puck to the first guy, but then they had four guys waiting for
us there."
Once the Flyers get closer to the net, they still need more traffic in front
of Leafs goalie Ed Belfour.
"Traffic on a more consistent basis," Keith Primeau said. "At
times, we had traffic and rebounds, but we have to battle harder and get there
more often. They won't let us go there without battling back."
In Game 1, the Flyers' first goal was a bouncing rebound off a Jeremy Roenick
shot that Tony Amonte put under Belfour's arm. Ragnarsson's game-winner was
a deflection off Nik Antropov's shin pads. That's traffic, but it's the wrong
kind of traffic - Toronto traffic. The Flyers want to use themselves to screen
Belfour.
"That is what he wants - seeing shots," Amonte said. "Most goalies,
if they see those blue-line shots, they will stop them and deflect them away
from the net. We have to battle through them and get to the net."
And battle through the trap to start it all.
Loose pucks. There is little chance of seeing Kim Johnsson tonight. He didn't
skate yesterday and still can't grip his stick because of the bone fracture
in his right hand. His absence is huge on the power play, but the more time
the Flyers buy him by using Sami Kapanen, the more Johnsson can recover... .
Todd Fedoruk's wife, Theresa, gave birth to a boy, Luke, at Virtua-West Jersey
Hospital Voorhees on Wednesday and Radovan Somik's wife, Lucia, gave birth to
a baby girl, Nikol Somikova, on Friday at the same hospital.