Late giveaway costly as Flyers lose to the Blue Jackets

VINNY LECAVALIER hunched over and put his stick over his knees, slowly making his way to the bench with 19,082 groaning at his egregious turnover, which ended up in the back of the net.

Roger Neilson would've had a field day with the Zapruder-like video.

A brilliant save by Ray Emery landed on Lecavalier's stick on the half-wall, moving up the ice. Lecavalier shoveled the puck on his backhand, thinking Pierre-Edouard Bellemare was curling toward him.

He never even lifted his head.

"I obviously didn't see the guy that picked up that puck," Lecavalier said. "I'd like to get that back. It's easy to say now: Just throw it off the wall. Tough one."

Lecavalier had multiple risk-free options. He would've been out of the zone with three more strides. He could've bounced it past Brandon Dubinsky on the boards.

Anything but a blind backhand pass toward the middle of the ice - a fundamental error that's preached to players as young as 8.

"Inexcusable turnover and it's in our net," coach Craig Berube said. "Put it off the wall. We talked about keeping the puck out of the middle of the ice against this team. That cost us."

No player was really immune on the play - a breakdown from the time the Blue Jackets crossed the blue line. Michael Del Zotto slid to block a shot, which he failed to do, then quickly turned the other direction to leave the zone.

Draw a line on the ice from the spot Lecavalier bumbled the puck and Del Zotto might have actually been farther up the ice than Lecavalier. That left a slam-dunk passing play between Cam Atkinson and Matt Calvert for a tap-in goal.

Everything the Flyers worked for in the second period was washed away with that sequence, the go-ahead goal in 5-2 defeat, which served as their first regulation loss in 10 games. The Flyers last lost in regulation on Jan. 19 on Long Island.

Hockey is a strange game. The Flyers actually played better last night than they did in each of their three previous road games, but ended up with nothing to show for it.

They had a chance to draw within four points of idle Boston, but instead sit six back of a playoff spot, with the Bruins facing Edmonton tonight.

Karma caught up with the Flyers. They earned points in games they probably shouldn't have in their 6-0-3 run and paid the price last night. Before James Wisniewski's first period goal, the Flyers had not trailed in 466 minutes, 40 seconds of game action, a hard-to-believe stat, considering how much time they've spent pinned in their own zone since Jan. 27.

"That put us behind the eight ball," Berube said. "We didn't really recover from that goal in the first period, in my opinion."

Last night, the Flyers had 85 shot attempts, compared with only 38 for Columbus. Their 44 shots on goal were a season high. Then again, Emery came back to Earth with a few juicy rebounds after an incredible stretch, looking more like the netminder who was 46th in the NHL in save percentage.

"I thought we played better," said Wayne Simmonds, who scored his 22nd goal of the season. "The first period, they got us. Besides that, we were all over them. It sucks.

"Hockey is a game of mistakes. The team that makes less mistakes is usually the one who wins the game. I thought we played a good game, a great 40 [minutes], honestly."

The only bright takeaway for the Flyers is that their process improved, if ever so slightly. It is still flawed, given the fundamental mistakes and turnovers. But they dominated the second period, manhandling an NHL team just about as much as possible, holding a commanding 20-6 shot advantage.

"The game we want to play is in the second period," Claude Giroux said. "We came back, we got a little pissed off. We started playing real hockey. I think we played very well tonight. The score doesn't show it, but we had a lot of chances, we were on them. In the third period, we had the momentum. We need to find a way to keep it and take advantage of it."

The Flyers failed to sell out Wells Fargo Center for the second consecutive home game. That follows a streak of 175 sellouts from Nov. 18, 2010, through Jan. 31 . . . Defenseman Andrew MacDonald sat for the third game in a row, his second as a healthy scratch after missing one game for his grandmother's funeral . . . Zac Rinaldo was also a healthy scratch, his first since serving an eight-game suspension . . . The Flyers donated $10,000 to Scott Hartnell's #HartnellDown Foundation in honor of his 1,000th game last week. The former Flyer collected two assists for Columbus.

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