A Look at What Has Happened to the Flyers During this Late-Season Collapse

With four games to go, it’s looking like the Flyers are a speed horse running a race on a 1 and 1/2-mile track.

In other words, it gets out in front early, and even though the odds of winning on a longer track are long, it’s setting the pace for 3/4 of the race and makes you think for a moment that it has enough juice to get across the finish line. Then, over the last few furlongs, it fades as the closing thoroughbreds blow past it, and it doesn’t hit the board and ruins all of your longshot betting tickets.

How else do you explain losing seven straight games, with the rock bottom being a blowout 6-2 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday, as you push for a playoff berth that many people thought you should never be in contention for to begin with?

The Flyers woke up Sunday morning on the outside of the playoff picture and looking in for the first time since December 4th. They are in a tailspin, and likely have to win out if they want to get to the postseason.

That probably isn’t going to happen, but at the same time, it’s not like the teams they’re contending with are running away and hiding. They have flaws of their own, meaning the door hasn’t been slammed shut on the Flyers, but the reality is Philadelphia is counting on a bunch of inexperienced players to deliver in these crucial games while these other teams have a wee bit more experience.

Take, for example, the Pittsburgh Penguins, who are the one team getting hot at the right time and could sneak into the playoffs. They won a game with a playoff-type atmosphere Saturday against the equally scorching Tampa Bay Lightning. The final score was 5-4. Four of the Penguins goals were scored by Evgeni Malkin (two), Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang. Think they know how to win important games in April? (Stephen Stamkos had a pair for the Lightning as well).

The New York Islanders have a pair of goalies who know how to win at this time of year in Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov. Varlamov pitched a 41-save shutout of Nashville on Saturday.

And even though they lost on Friday, Washington got both of its goals scored by Alexander Ovechkin. Ovi has looked every bit of 38 years old for most of the season, but since the Caps have been making a push to try to make the playoffs, he’s scored 11 goals in the last 11 games for Washington.

There are three seasons in hockey. There’s the regular-regular season – which is the slog from opening night through the trade deadline. And there are the playoffs, of course. But the short season in between is THE season. It’s the time of year that separates the wheat from the chaff. It’s a sprint at the end of the marathon of about 18-20 games that determines who gets into the postseason dance and who is left without an invite.

There are five teams battling for those last two spots in the East – the Islanders, the Penguins, the Capitals, the Flyers and the Detroit Red Wings.

Since the trade deadline, here are their records:

• Penguins: 8-5-3, 19 points
• Islanders: 7-7-1, 15 points
• Capitals: 6-7-2, 14 points
• Red Wings: 4-8-2, 10 points
• FLYERS: 3-8-3, 9 points

More notably, here’s their goal differentials in those games:

• Penguins: +1
• Islanders: (minus-9)
• Capitals: (minus-13)
• Red Wings: (minus-15)
• FLYERS: (minus-28)

As you can see, none of these teams are juggernauts. It’s really a matter of who stinks the least. And when you have a group of teams with these types of flaws, you lean on experience to help get you there.

It’s no surprise that the Penguins have the most experience at this time of year, and the Flyers have the least. The Caps probably have more than the Islanders, but New York has a bunch of players who did go to the conference finals in consecutive seasons, so it’s no surprise they’re close. The Red Wings are like the Flyers, but with just a little more experience.

From a high level, it’s easy to see why the Flyers are in a free fall. But when you look for reasons as to why, there appears to be a top five list. Here are those five reasons.

1. Goaltending

The Flyers have allowed 62 goals since the trade deadline. That’s in 14 games. That’s an average of 4.43 goals per game. Some of that is on the defense in front of the goalies, but it’s also on the goalies themselves.

Sam Ersson, who was having an excellent rookie season prior to the deadline, has come unglued. In 11 appearances since the deadline he is 3-5-2 with a 4.31 GAA and an .844 save percentage. Those are numbers more akin to playing for a team trying to secure the first overall pick than a team trying to secure a playoff spot.

The backups haven’t been good either. Ever since the Carter Hart situation, Cal Petersen, Felix Sandstrom, and Ivan Fedotov have combined for a 3.88 GAA and an .847 save percentage.

The Flyers needed Ersson to be what he was pre-deadline, but it was a lot to ask him to maintain that as a rookie, playing more games than they ever could have expected, after trading one of your best defenseman, and with three other starting defensemen out with injury.

Sam Ersson is going to need a month in the mountains after this season is over.

— Jimmy Puckets (@UncleButsy) April 7, 2024

Ersson may well be a good goalie in the NHL, but he’s not handled the pressure of being the go-to guy in a playoff race well.

2. Special teams

It’s been lacking all season. It’s the worst in the NHL at 12.7% effectiveness overall. Believe it or not, it’s been even worse since the deadline. The Flyers are just 5-for-42 on the power play since March 9th. That’s 11.9%. They haven’t scored on the power play in their last five games (0-for-13), all losses.

In games at this time of year, there is very little room to operate at 5-on-5. As such, you need your special teams to be more on point. The Flyers just needed to be a little bit better than they had been all season. Instead, they got worse.

With the way the #Flyers penalty kill has struggled of late too, it doesn’t seem to matter what the man-situation is (5-on-4, 4-on-5, 4-on-4, 3-on-3), the extra ice has created lots of trouble.

— Kevin Durso (@Kevin_Durso) April 6, 2024

Meanwhile, the penalty kill, which was the best in the league leading up to the trade deadline, has cratered. Especially during the seven-game losing streak. It’s still tied for third-best in the league (83.5%), but since the deadline they’re just 65.7% (23-for-35). They still lead the NHL with 15 shorthanded goals this season but have just one since March 9th.

Problem number one has a lot to do with part of problem number two since your goalie is your best penalty killer, and if the goalie is struggling as mightily as the Flyers goalies have, then it’s likely your PK is suffering too, but the team in front of the goalie hasn’t been nearly as solid as it was earlier in the season.

3. Sustainability

We talked on Snow The Goalie frequently back in November and December about how the Flyers were playing a style of game that was more conducive for March and April – a lot of North/South play. A lot of shot blocking. A lot of real buy in to needing to play at an elevated level. It caught a lot of teams off guard. It’s what made the Flyers one of the NHL’s most pleasant surprises. It’s what got coach John Tortorella’s name being brought into the Jack Adams Award conversation.

But we also questioned whether that was physically sustainable over the course of an 82-game season. It’s usually reserved for the playoff push and the postseason for a reason – it’s incredibly taxing on you physically. And as much as you’d like to continue it game in and game out, sometimes the desire to execute is outmuscled by fatigue.

This is why teams usually wait to ramp up this style of play for the final 20 games of the season and then the playoffs. Yes, you can do it for four months, but you can’t do it for seven.

The Flyers tried to do it for seven and while they reaped rewards through February, they’re suffering for it now.

A small example of that can be looking at blocked shots. According to Hockey-reference.com the Flyers have blocked 1,441 shots this season, or an average of 18.5 per game.

Since the deadline, they have averaged just 17.4 per game. And during the current seven-game losing streak, they have blocked just 14.4 per game.

It’s small, but it’s emblematic of an overarching thing that is plaguing the team right now.

4. Injuries

All teams have injuries, but the Flyers had some hit at the worst possible time. Travis Konecny. Owen Tippett. Jamie Drysdale. Nick Seeler. Sean Couturier. These were big losses when they happened and some of these guys are playing through injuries as well and it’s impacting their performance.

Apparent leader with a letter on his sweater, Travis Konecny, was a -3 tonight and had 0 points. He also has 0 goals in his last 5 games with a -8 rating.

— Nick (@ForzaInter215) April 7, 2024

There’s a reason Konecny has only four goals in his last 15 games after missing two weeks with an upper body injury that sounds like it may need to be addressed in the offseason. It’s hard to criticize him for gutting it and not being able to produce at this point.

Tippett’s injury was a little earlier than Konecny’s, but he’s only had 10 goals in 28 games since coming back, which is a little off the pace he was headed toward before the injury.

Drysdale missed five weeks with a shoulder injury and Seeler missed four weeks with a foot injury. Drysdale has only been back for three games and Seeler for four, but those four to five weeks encompassed a lot of the time we are talking about here, and the Flyers had to rely on AHL call-ups in the interim.

5. Coaching decisions

It’s hard to criticize the job Torts has done this year. He’s a very good coach and squeezed all the juice he could out of a team that had a hell of a roller coaster ride. But it’s fair to question some of the buttons pushed in recent weeks.

The Flyers are 1-8 since he scratched his captain, Couturier, for two games. He lost a game in overtime starting depth players and not his skill players in the extra period. He demoted Joel Farabee to the fourth line. He benched Konecny for a stretch of a period. He called his team soft, and embarrassment to the Flyers uniform and said some of his players have no clue how to play at this time of year. He got thrown out of a game and suspended at the start of all of this.

He’s reached into his bag of tricks and hoped some of them would work. However, the tactics he has used recently are usually more conducive for teams that are on the brink of contending for a title, and not a young, inexperienced team just trying to make the playoffs for the first time.

You cant credit Torts for the team playing well earlier in the year, then give him
No blame for this.

He is essentially Gabe Kapler right now. Coaching his team to fall apart when it counts.

— Dylan MacKinnon (@DylanFMackinnon) April 7, 2024

Couple that with pushing his team to play harder and faster earlier in the season than usual, and burning out guys like Couturier and defensemen Cam York and Travis Sanheim with a slew of minutes has led to them being gassed at the most important time of the year as well.

He took a team of lemons and made lemonade for the first 65 games of the season. But unless things turn around dramatically in the final four games, the drink is only going to taste more and more bitter.

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