Flyers need more flow offensively in Game 4 against Penguins

The Philadelphia Flyers' focus will be on creating more offense, and creating it on a consistent basis, going into Game 4 against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVAS, NBCSP, ATTSN-PT).
The Flyers trail the best-of-7 series 2-1 after a 5-1 loss in Game 3 on Sunday.

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Philadelphia has been outshot in eight of the nine periods in the series and 94-71 in total. At 5-on-5, the Penguins have a 66-48 advantage, according to NaturalStatTrick.com.
The one period the Flyers carried the play was the first period of Game 3, when they outshot the Penguins 11-4.
However, the Penguins had a 22-16 advantage in the second and third periods.
"It's one thing to do it for 20 minutes," Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said Monday. "It's another thing to really have to challenge ourselves to do that over a 60-minute period. That's the time of year it is. … I thought the pace of our game coming out last night was good. Our execution with the puck was pretty good. And at the end of 20 minutes, we had put together a solid 20 minutes. We come out down 1-0, but in terms of our overall play, that was a solid 20 minutes of hockey. We didn't duplicate that when we came out in the second period."
Getting more pucks to the net would help. The Penguins blocked 17 shots in Game 3, including 12 of the 22 attempts by the Flyers' six defensemen. Better, and quicker, puck movement is needed to create more lanes.
"We've got to come with more speed like we did in (a 5-1 win in) Game 2," forward Jakub Voracek said. "I think we were too spread out a little bit in the neutral zone and spread out on the forecheck. Better timing from the [defensemen] and from the forwards. Hopefully it'll get better Wednesday."
What also must get better is their discipline. The Flyers' offensive flow for much of the first three games has been stunted by being shorthanded 15 times, including seven in Game 3.

That includes a stretch of 29:14, from a slashing penalty against Claude Giroux at 1:12 of the second period until a tripping penalty against Radko Gudas at 10:26 of the third, that saw the Flyers whistled for six minor penalties. During that span, the Penguins outscored the Flyers 4-1, with three power-play goals. The Penguins had a 19-11 advantage in shots on goal and a 37-19 lead in shot attempts.
Prior to the Giroux penalty, the Flyers trailed 1-0 but were outshooting the Penguins 11-5 and had a 29-13 lead in shot attempts.
"I thought we played a pretty good first period," Hakstol said. "And then we got off track with the penalties."
RELATED: [Complete Penguins vs. Flyers series coverage]
Hakstol said he hadn't decided if the line changes he made during Game 3 would carry into Game 4. He switched the left wing on three of the four lines, with Travis Konecny moving to the second line with Voracek and center Nolan Patrick, Scott Laughton going to the third line with center Valtteri Filppula and right wing Wayne Simmonds, and Oskar Lindblom dropped to the fourth line with center Jori Lehtera and right wing Matt Read. Only the top line of Giroux, center Sean Couturier and right wing Michael Raffl remained the same.
Regardless of any changes, the Flyers are confident they can have a bounce-back effort in Game 4 similar to what they did following their 7-0 loss in Game 1.
"It's not time to panic here," Giroux said. "We have Wednesday here. Guys are going to be ready. We'll put this one behind us and we'll do exactly what we did after Game 1, we'll look at what we did wrong and fix it."