The St. Louis Blues don’t have to wait long to exact revenge on the Philadelphia Flyers.
Less than a week after losing at home to the Flyers, the Blues will pay a visit to Philadelphia for a rematch on Thursday.
When the teams met on Nov. 14, Philadelphia came back from a 5-3 deficit to tie the game on third-period goals by Christian Dvorak and Owen Tippett. Trevor Zegras scored the lone goal of the shootout as the Flyers prevailed.
“A lot of game left. Stick with it,” Philadelphia coach Rick Tocchet said of his team’s attitude in the third period that night. “That’s really all you can do.”
“We’ve just got to find a way to close out games,” St. Louis forward Robert Thomas said. “We come out in the third, grab two goals. There should be no chance of letting them back in. We’ve got to clean that up. … Very disappointing.”
That night’s disappointment has lingered for the Blues, who followed up that defeat against the Flyers with two more setbacks. Most recently, the team dropped a 3-2 decision against the host Maple Leafs on Tuesday as Toronto’s William Nylander scored on Jordan Binnington with less than a minute remaining in overtime.
“We did play with much more intention, we were much more physical and those things are good, but we need to start winning games,” St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery said.
Nathan Walker and Dalibor Dvorsky scored for the Blues, while Binnington made 26 saves in the opener of a five-game road trip. St. Louis has lost 12 of its last 15 games overall.
“I think if we look back on it, a couple bounces here or there, we could be looking at a different outcome,” Blues defenseman Cam Fowler said. “But at the end of the day, we have to find a way to start putting some wins in the win column here. No matter what it takes or how we have to do it. It’s a results-based game, so we have to find a way to start stacking some wins here.”
Meanwhile, the recent win over the Blues was the Flyers’ only victory in their last four games. They were trounced by the Dallas Stars 5-1 on Friday as Dvorak’s goal midway through the third was the team’s only dent in the scoreboard.
Philadelphia fell behind 3:48 into the contest and then allowed a natural hat trick to Jason Robertson, all while managing just 21 shots on goal.
“I think it’s been kind of a common theme here lately — our starts haven’t been good,” said captain Sean Couturier. “It just makes it harder on us to climb back in every game. There’s no quit, but we just had a third game in four nights, just makes it tougher on us to get back in it.”
Indeed, the hard-fought win over the Blues combined with the difficult matchup against the Stars one day later made for a challenging stretch last week.
“Obviously, a tough back-to-back,” said Philadelphia defenseman Travis Sanheim. “(We need to) learn from it and try to grow as a team.”
