The Flyers had their small winning streak snapped by the Maple Leafs last night, losing 3-2. The Flyers squandered a chance to reclaim first place in the division back from the Rangers. The Maple Leafs played a hard, fast, high energy game, the Flyers did not.

Flyers jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a power play goal by Joni Pitkanen early in the first period. Mat Sundin of the Maple Leafs redirected a shot past Antero Niittymaki to tie up the game at 1 later in the first. The Flyers only had 4 shots on goal in the first, the Leafs had 13. Considering only 1 of the Flyers shots was at even strength, you start to see how dominating the Leafs were in that period. Flyers did come out with some better energy in the second period. The game was more balanced, but no scoring in the second. The third started with the Flyers coming out basically flat. They gave up 2 goals in the first two minutes of the third period. R.J. Umberger did score late in the third, but the Flyers couldn’t score the tying goal in the last seconds to get the game to overtime.

Nitty for the Flyers and Aubin for the Maple Leafs played really well.

The Flyers played a totally different game last night as compared to against the Senators this weekend.

Coach Ken Hitchcock – We had the wrong attitude to start the game. We knew what the game was going to be like. They play a heavy game, an old NHL game. We wanted to play around the game instead of plow through it. We got it back a little bit in the second period with some of our guys, we were down two goals and we started to get it back in the third. We had a terrible start in the third period. We had a neutral zone give away. When we started the game, it looked like we just threw our sticks on the ice.

Yep, that about sums it up.

Matt Sundin, Alexei Ponikarovsky and Michal Handzus were the three stars.

Branko Radivojevic and Turner Stevenson were healthy scratches.

Looking at the Flyers plus/minus stats Petr Nedved and Brian Savage are at the bottom with minus 15. Much of Nedved’s stats are from Phoenix, but Savage’s is all Flyers. With the lazy play tonight and since Savage was minus 1 I hope Hitchcock shakes things up a bit. Like scratching Savage and letting Branko Radivojevic play some games. Sure Branko is minus 4, but that’s a hell of a lot better than minus 15.
I believe it was Glenn Healey that made the comment last night during the game about Savage’s crappy plus/minus stats. Career wise Savage is a minus 77 player. That cant be good.

Good news for Kim Johnsson. On Tuesday he skated for the first time since January when he left with a concussion. Although he is still weeks away from joining the team in full practice. Keith Primeau is continuing to improve, but really not much hope with him returning for the playoffs.

According to a Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal survey in the March 20-26 issue, the Flyers led the NHL in total ticket sales through March 13. The Flyers sold 667,427 tickets for their first 35 home games. Tuesday night’s game against the Maple Leafs marked their 34th sellout in 36 games. Street & Smith’s ranked the Detroit Red Wings second in the league with 662,178 tickets sold and the Calgary Flames came in third with 655,826 tickets sold. So are the US venue’s larger than the Canadian ones or are fans in Detroit and Philly more passionate about the game than the teams up north?