Watch: Flyers’ Tortorella Benches Owen Tippett After This Goal

The Philadelphia Flyers lost their second game in a row on Friday, and most had the same explanation for it.

Head coach John Tortorella called out the team’s nowhere-to-be-found backchecking, while veteran forward Cam Atkinson called out the cheating and lack of support from his Flyers teammates.

One culprit of this – leading to a New York Rangers goal – was Owen Tippett.

Mika Zibanejad speeds to the net and finds twine with a beautiful redirect for his second goal of the game!#NYR pic.twitter.com/kElKOs3RZn

— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) November 24, 2023

The Rangers’ third goal – seen above – starts out as a rather harmless breakout. All five Rangers players were below their own blue line, and then Mika Zibanejad receives the puck in the middle of the ice to start the rush. The problem is that two Flyers converge on him, and one was Travis Sanheim. The other was Tippett. That leaves Cam York on an island by himself.

Zibanejad was able to easily bypass the Philadelphia Flyers’ neutral zone defense with a simple pass to Blake Wheeler on the wing. Without the puck, Zibanejad races by Tippett, who didn’t bother to pick him up, and Sanheim, who appears to have assumed Tippett had his cover.

As a result, Tippett played just one shift for the Flyers for the remainder of the period.

The entire sequence was a recipe for disaster, but could have been prevented altogether had Sanheim elected to play the transition more conservatively. Although the Flyers rearguard has been the start of the show in the first quarter of the season, his performance against the Rangers left so much to be desired.

Owen Tippett and the Philadelphia Flyers will have an opportunity to redeem themselves against the New York Islanders on Saturday night.

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