Flyers Fall To Islanders In Penultimate Preseason Game; Highlights

The Philadelphia Flyers’ preseason “dress rehearsal” game at Xfinity Mobile Arena looked, at times, like a team ready for Opening Night. At others, it looked every bit like a group still wrestling with new systems and the occasional self-inflicted wound. 

In the end, the Islanders capitalized on late mistakes and handed Philadelphia a 4–3 loss—a result that matters less than the patterns behind it.

For Rick Tocchet and his staff, this was less about the score and more about the sharp contrasts on display: moments of speed and promise counterbalanced by costly breakdowns that NHL teams will never forgive.

The decisive sequence that led to the Islanders’ game-winning goal encapsulated the problem. What should have been a manageable defensive read spiraled into a freebie for New York.

“There’s a couple of mistakes,” Tocchet explained postgame. “First of all, [Matvei Michkov] has to get out there and he got beat up the ice. He was ahead of the guys. I think [Adam Ginning]—he’s either got to go or he has to back off. He was caught in between. He’s just buying time, just stay in the middle of the ice, let the guys back there.”

This, for Tocchet, wasn’t about punishing individuals but stressing principles. The Flyers’ new system will take time to master, but these lapses—players caught in between, failing to sort assignments—are the kind of breakdowns that giftwrap goals.

“It’s a new system,” Tocchet said. “We’ve gotta go through these things. But if you communicate that stuff…yeah, that has to be better…There’s just freebies. You might get about three freebies a month; you can’t give them two or three in a game. It just can’t happen. You can’t give free goals in this league.”

Egor Zamula, too, earned a pointed critique after a night in which he failed to distinguish himself. “Yeah,” Tocchet admitted bluntly. “He’s got to pick it up. Definitely.”

That’s preseason in a nutshell: mistakes become teaching…