Flyers With a ‘f—ing Awful' Collapse in Mind-blowing Loss to Flames

CALGARY, Alberta - Long after most of his teammates had removed their gear and hit the showers, Ivan Provorov was still sitting in his locker stall in a daze, in a disbelief after what had transpired.

"That's as bad as it gets," Dale Weise said. "That's f---ing awful."

The Flyers were 80 seconds away from taking two points out of Calgary, clinging to a 5-3 lead.

Calgary's Rasmus Andersson scored his first NHL goal on a shot from the point that Anthony Stolarz never saw. Even after that, it appeared the Flyers might survive as they cleared their zone with roughly 18 seconds remaining in the game, only to sit back and watch Calgary's top line pull off a Hail Mary with Sean Monahan scoring with seven seconds remaining.

Then, 35 seconds into overtime, the collapse was made complete by Johnny Gaudreau's game-winner, finishing off a shocking 6-5 loss Wednesday for the Flyers (see observations)

"You could tell at that point that they were hungrier and they wanted it more than us," Stolarz said. "As a goalie, I've seen some crazier things. I remember when I was with London, we scored with 0.1 seconds left to win the OHL championship. So you can never take a second off. It's definitely going to sting a little bit."

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Against this Flames team, the Flyers were playing with fire in the worst way. Calgary now leads the league with seven wins when trailing after two periods coupled with its 49 third-period goals, also tops in the NHL. 

An undisciplined Flyers team committed four penalties in under 11 minutes, allowing Calgary four consecutive power-play opportunities (see highlights). Impressively, behind Stolarz's stellar play in net, the Flyers not only killed off those penalties, but Sean Couturier also scored shorthanded to take a 5-3 lead with 8:50 remaining.

Still, those repeated trips to the box clearly set the tone for a very lopsided third period that saw the Flames outshoot the Flyers, 16-4.

"The penalties set the table for the two tying goals," Dave Hakstol said. "That kills your bench, kills your energy and drains five or six forwards and everyone else is just sitting there."

Wayne Simmonds' pointless roughing penalty two minutes into the third period started the nonstop trips to the box. Scott Laughton and Michael Raffl followed with back-to-back holding calls and Shayne Gostisbehere was whistled for slashing.  

"We did it every way you can," Hakstol said. "We took a roughing penalty 200 feet from our net, a holding penalty, a slashing penalty. At 4-2, we're still trying to make fancy plays that end up in turnovers in the neutral zone when you should just be locking down the game."

As they preach about finding ways to win, the Flyers are mastering the technique of finding different ways to lose a game - whether it's coughing up two-goal third-period leads (twice in three weeks) or a game that eventually leads to a blowout.

"We've got to find a way to reset," Weise said. "We get embarrassed in Winnipeg. We're playing OK there and we shoot ourselves in the foot.

"It's embarrassing."

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