Loss of MacDonald scrambles Flyers defense

Who knew the loss of Andrew MacDonald would be such a house of cards for the Flyers in general and their defense in particular?

They did, apparently.

"Mac has the most experience out of all of us,'' Radko Gudas said  Friday after the Flyers practiced at the Air Canada Centre. "He was the cornerstone on the back end for all the young guys back there. So me, Ghost, Manning, and Provo, it's up to us to step up and provide the calmness in our zone and play the game we all want.''

Perhaps you've heard or observed. Calmness in their zone has not been a trademark of the Flyers' defensive corps since MacDonald took a shot above the knee last Saturday that will sideline him for at least until the middle of next month. The 31-year-old defenseman, by far the elder in a group made up  mainly of players under the age of 24, was part of a first-line tandem with Ivan Provorov that had been cited repeatedly in the early going by coach Dave Hakstol as a catalyst to the Flyers success.

Hockey's ever-growing list of advanced metrics doesn't exactly support that view, but his teammates sure do. Perception, it seems sometimes, is reality, and when Hakstol scrambled all three pairings in his absence – well, mayhem ensued. "Jittery'' has been used repeatedly to describe the back-end troubles that doomed them in losses to Anaheim and Ottawa, and Gudas has a theory why it occurred.

"We didn't have much time in our training camp to play with each other,'' said Gudas, who at 27 is now the oldest member of the Flyers defense. "We had a lot of young guys fighting for those spots and we were rotating guys around, and you don't get a great feel for each other.''

"Soon as Mac goes out — jumble jumble,'' said Flyers general manager Ron Hextall. "You try to figure in preseason what your lines are, what your D pairs are, and it's hard. You've only got eight games, you only want players playing a certain amount of games, you don't get a great feel. Two games ago was it our pairs or was it that we just weren't very good? It's hard to judge exactly what it was. It's a very small sample size."

Both Gudas and his Hextall  saw some hope in how those pairings finished Thursday night's 5-4 loss to Ottawa, allowing for the near comeback despite an awful night in the net by Michal Neuvirth.

"You hope we correct it right away and guys get familiar with each other,'' said Hextall. "But a lot of these guys haven't played with each other much. That's just reality. There's nothing you can do about it. It's no excuse, that's for damn sure. But I think last night toward the end looked like they felt comfortable with each other.''

How comfortable? A high-scoring 7-3 Toronto team whose losses have come when they fell behind early is likely to let us know quick.

Notes: Neither Hextall nor Gudas anticipates any additional disciplinary action for the defenseman's hard check on Ottawa's Chris Wideman Thursday that resulted in a match penalty. Neither saw it as a penalty. "Radko hits hard,'' said Hextall. "As hard as anybody in the league. So his hits are impact hits. If one of our 17 other skaters makes that hit last night, nothing comes of it. … It's not fair. You can't penalize him because he's as strong as a bull.''

Said Gudas, "I didn't think it was a bad hit at all. I did most of the things I could do right.''