WASHINGTON — The scoring struggles were to be expected. The Philadelphia Flyers, already short on talent to start the season, dealt away top-nine forwards Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee and Scott Laughton over the past two months, then didn’t keep newcomer Andrei Kuzmenko either after he was mostly effective in his brief stint with the club.
But this terrible?
The Flyers lost again on Thursday, 3-2 to the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena. They are 1-8-0 in their last nine games — with that one win coming in a shootout — and have been outscored 35-13 over that span.
Naturally, their individual statistics aren’t any better.
Noah Cates, now the top-line center, is scoreless in his last eight games. Rookie Matvei Michkov is scoreless in his last six games. Tyson Foerster has just one assist in his last eight games. Owen Tippett has one goal and one assist in his last 10 games.
Don’t let the defensemen off the hook, either. Travis Sanheim, the Flyers’ top defenseman, hasn’t scored a goal since Dec. 14, or 39 games ago — nearly half of a regular season. Cam York, his partner, has just one assist in his last 12 games.
And of course, there’s Travis Konecny, who now has just one goal in his last 23 games and none in 13 straight. Konecny was visibly frustrated from the start of Thursday night’s game, slamming the bench door after his very first shift when he passed up a shot from close range. Later in the period, Konecny opted to try and set up Olle Lycksell on a two-on-one rather than just ripping it himself. Cameras caught him on the bench afterwards, shaking his head in apparent frustration.
In the third, Konecny failed to convert a two-on-one rush with Tippett and was stopped just in front of the blue paint by Charlie Lindgren. A few minutes later he chipped it just wide on a two-on-none rush with Michkov.
Since the downturn began on March 4, the Flyers are averaging just 1.44 goals per game, one of just two teams averaging under 2 over that span (Columbus is 31st at 1.63 per game).
The final 12 games look like they’re going be rough. It was always going to be that way after GM Daniel Briere’s pre-deadline moves. But the fact that so many of the young players who are supposed to be key parts of the future seem not to be able to make a key play to help get the Flyers out of their doldrums should probably be setting off some alarm bells in the front office.
For his part, coach John Tortorella hasn’t shown any outward frustration, at least not with the cameras turned on. Prior to Thursday’s game, he praised the team for playing a patient game on Monday in its 2-0 loss in Tampa Bay, and for not opening it up and trading chances with an opponent that is tremendously more talented.
“Our guys are trying,” he said about two hours before the Capitals game.
They are. And they did again on Thursday. The Flyers nearly erased a 3-0 deficit after two periods, as goals from Ryan Poehling and Sean Couturier brought them to within one. They outshot the Eastern Conference leaders 28-16, too — including a 16-2 margin in the third, when they could have easily packed it in.
Ryan Poehling had a goal and an assist in the third period as the Flyers tried to pull off the comeback. (Daniel Kucin Jr. / Imagn Images)
“You guys know, you guys follow us all year — we work hard, and we’re trying,” Konecny said. “It’s not the effort.”
Konecny is right. Despite the mounting losses, there just hasn’t been any evidence that the Flyers are thinking ahead to late April tee times or tuning out their head coach, as much as some of Tortorella’s detractors might like to believe.
In fact, they seem to be listening intently in regards to how he wants them to play. That is, low-event games in which they’re not caught trading chances with clubs much more dangerous offensively than they are.
“It can get ugly quick if we do that,” Couturier said before the game. “I guess it’s a good test to kind of see if we’re mature enough to kind of fight through it, and be patient and get those low-scoring game wins. I think it’s just important to stick together and go through this the right way.”
Said Poehling: “We’re still young, but we’re growing together. I think that’s where the maturity comes from.”
Of course, a better power play would help to alleviate some of the pressure. But that’s a fantasy. The Flyers went 0-for-2 on Thursday, and in one sequence emblematic of how lost they seem to be when up a man, Couturier’s 70-foot wrist shot was easily gloved by Lindgren, who had enough time to hand the puck off to a teammate to clear the zone as no Flyers were in the vicinity.
In their last nine games, the Flyers are now 0-for-25 on the power play, down to 14.3 percent and 30th in the NHL for the season. It seems inevitable at this point that Briere is going to have to make some sort of coaching change in the off-season when it comes to associate coach Rocky Thompson, who has overseen the league’s worst power play in the two previous seasons before this one.
At the same time, skilled players should be able to make plays in open ice from time to time, too. Even if they look utterly confused with what they’re supposed to be doing while the coaching staff has moved players all around and in and out of various roles on the power play, someone should be able to step to change the momentum when the opportunity presents itself.
That hasn’t happened, either.
None of this may matter in the long run. Heck, the scoring drought could even benefit the Flyers if they continue to put themselves in better position to secure a top-five draft pick this summer. And the Flyers’ lack of any high-end, play-driving centers does adversely affect the rest of the lineup. Perhaps with a roster that doesn’t have a handful of AHL-caliber players, with another center or two and at least a moderately effective power play, this will just be a blip on the radar.
We’ll see. Because right now, it shouldn’t be this ugly.
(Photo: Daniel Kucin Jr. / Imagn Images)
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