FLYERS NEWS

The Flyers welcomed the Atlanta Thrashers to the Wachovia center tonight to complete the 2nd half of a home and home with them, as they looked to snap a 2 game losing streak and avoid an Atlanta sweep of the season series between the two teams. While the Orange and Black did put up a much better effort on this night, allowing just 31 shots on goal, while littering the Atlanta goal with 45 shots, it made little difference. Once again the Thrashers jumped out to a quick lead, this time 2-0 just 11 minutes into the game. With 8 minutes to play in the 3rd period Mike Richards finally got the Flyer's on the board, cutting it to 2-1 and briefly restoring hope for an Orange and Black victory. That hope was dashed just 5 minutes later when Rich Pevereley scored to make it 3-1 Atlanta and put the Flyers away for good.

While it was poor defense that doomed the Flyers last night, tonight it was poor play Brian Boucher that killed. As mentioned the Flyer's defense did a decent job holding the quick Thrashers to just 31 shots on goal and killing off all 3 of their power play opportunities. Unfortunately, Boucher failed to handle a couple of pucks he should have been able to, while Atlanta's Ondrej Pavelec, made all the saves he had to, 44 in all, and carried his Thrashers to the 3-1 win. The Flyers also failed to really take advantage of all the scoring opportunities they had, including 3 listless powerplays. Put it all together you've got the Flyer's 3rd straight loss and now a big problem for the Orange and Black. With the loss the Flyers drop to 6th in the Eastern conference, now just 4 games ahead of the 9th place Thrashers, and suddenly are now in danger of the missing the playoffs completely if they don't turn things around and fast. He's hoping they do turn it around again before it's too late or we'll have nothing to watch next month.