How the Flyers broke the Islanders in the first period of Game 2, a thread (with clips):

#AnytimeAnywhere #Isles

The way the Isles got to Round 2 was their defensive structure. Collapsing towards the net so as not to allow any shots from in close, lots of dump ins, and then a hard forecheck. To beat them, opponents must play fast and open up the ice surface so as to get around this system.

The reason this is imperative is that the Islanders defenders, on their own, are not overly responsible defensively. Leddy, Mayfield, and Boychuk are all liabilities in their own end. Pulock and Pelech are nothing special. Toews is good, but not shutdown-tier.

The Flyers are a skilled hockey team. Channeling this skill to the highest possible degree is what they had to do to get the upper hand on the Isles in game 2.

In the first period, they did /exactly/ that. Watch...

On the first goal by Hayes:

Konecny avoids Toews's stick at the line with a pass. Hayes then has a ton of room to walk in, because Mayfield was basically a non-factor on this play. Again, bad coverage by him. 1 goal against. https://twitter.com/TheReplayGuy/status/1298700566802116610?s=19

On the second goal by Hayes again:

Pulock with a lazy effort to stop the rush at the line, and the Flyers get by him no problem. Pelech, like Mayfield, is basically just surrendering in front if the net. This is not how to defend. https://twitter.com/TheReplayGuy/status/1298703911835054080?s=19

On the third goal by Couturier:

This one's pretty self-explanatory. Leddy just gets walked here. His jock strap has just been sighted on Long Island as I type this. https://twitter.com/TheReplayGuy/status/1298706195910402049?s=09

The constant theme in all these goals: The Flyers had space and time. This allowed them to increase the pace of play and do things at a higher speed. This spelled trouble for the Islanders in the first because as I've said, New York's defenders are...

...not all that threatening in their own zone if they're being forced to defend against teams that have space and time. Sure, Varlamov was beat short side on 2 of the 3 shots, but all 3 goals were easily preventable chances. The Isles defense gave up on all three.

This is the danger of the Isles' game plan here. If their system works, it
/really/ works. But it's not impossible to beat, as Philly just showed. And things can go downhill quick when opponents find an answer.

#AnytimeAnywhere #Isles

(end of thread)