Highlights Beyond Highlights- March 7 vs. Panthers

With Sean Walker moving on to Colorado and Nick Seeler joining Rasmus Ristolainen and Jamie Drysdale on the injured list, the Flyers turned to Ronnie Attard and Adam Ginning to make their season debuts. The pair played well, particularly Ginning, who drew attention to himself on a number of occasions. Here’s four examples of solid work by Ginning in just his second NHL game.

Travis Konecny returned to the lineup and while he didn’t get a goal on this night, his presence is no doubt going to help the Flyers’ transition offense, which also took a hit with the departure of Walker. On this play, Konecny seems to be somewhat in jail when he manages to thread a pass through a ton of traffic to Joel Farabee, who ends up with an outstanding scoring chance.

Here’s a look at Garnet Hathaway’s game winner. He makes two sneaky good little plays just before scoring the goal to keep this attack alive.  First is the little backhand flip off the boards to start the cycle and get the puck to Noah Cates, who moves it to the point; if Hathaway takes that behind the net, he likely loses it to the Florida defense. Moments later, Noah Cates is making things happen when Hathaway offers himself as an option behind the net.

Two things happen once Hathaway has the puck – Brandon Montour (62) is drawn towards him away from the front of the net, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson (91), who had been pressuring Cates, is frozen a bit. This allows Cates to get away from OEL, and when Hathaway returns the pass, Cates is able to get it to Marc Staal at the point for the shot that led to Hathaway’s goal. 

Hathaway, for his part, manages to lose Montour and get into a space that Ekman-Larsson had vacated while sort of pursuing Cates.  It’s not a traditional cycle, but it was similarly effective in the sense that it generated opportunities for scoring chances.