Highlights Beyond Highlights- March 4 vs. Flames

The Flyers had an off-night on Tuesday against the Flames, but that doesn’t mean it was devoid of some good moments. Here’s a look at a few of them.

The first mention is a Rasmus Ristolainen appreciation moment on the Flyers’ first power play. He makes several difficult keep-ins on the left size of the zone, at the bottom of your screen near the blue line. He does rotate to the center and then the right point, but it’s the block of clearing attempts he makes on the left point that keep this power play going. This is a rather difficult skill that NHL defensemen tend to make look easy, but they have to work on it every day.

The next two are a couple nods to Andrei Kuzmenko in his first game against his former team. First up is a longer look at his goal, which was unassisted. He actually starts working towards this goal near his own blue line. He first takes possession in the neutral zone, but he gets tied up by a Calgary forward; however, Kuzmenko is able to get a stick on it to at least push it down toward the Calgary end. He then regroups and forechecks Mackenzie Weegar, who had just come off the bench, and retakes possession. He then does something that we first mentioned in the Winnipeg piece – he’s able to pull the puck closer to his body to change the angle of the shot and then also uses the defenseman as a screen to beat Dustin Wolf.

And then finally on the third Flyers goal that was eventually credited to Sean Couturier, Kuzmenko makes a little play along the near boards right before it. The puck is wrapped around from the far side to the near side, and Kuzmenko is able to pull it off the wall and just tap it to Matvei Michkov in stride. Without that little play, this likely ends up as a board battle that may or may not lead to anything.