The annual Philadelphia Flyers lengthy and insufferable losing streak is fully in effect. Following two embarrassing beatdowns in front of their home crowd against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Flyers continued to regress once they hit the road. In the first of two back-to-back showings, the Orange and Black were made a fool by a scorching hot Buffalo Sabres squad falling flat and dropping the contest 5-2 at KeyBank Center on Wednesday night.
Early on in the season the Flyers were unstoppable in games after a loss with a 13-1-5 record. Now Philadelphia finds themselves 0-3-1 and outscored 19-6 across their recent stretch of matchups.
“I think maybe we got to get our spark, our mojo back a little bit. I think we just got to reboot our brains a little bit and know that it’s a hard league and that you’re going to go through these tough stretches, but that’s part of it. We’re a pretty young team and I know we’ve played well up to this point, but we haven’t accomplished a whole lot. We’ve got to keep the foot on the pedal and keep going,” Trevor Zegras said.
It’s gone from bad to worse for the Flyers. On top of anything else that could go wrong, Dan Vladař sustained an injury in the first period and didn’t return to the ice. Sam Ersson made six of eight saves in relief. Hopefully Vladař avoided a serious injury as he’s been arguably the Flyers’ most valuable player. Aleksei Kolosov has been recalled from AHL Lehigh Valley, but hopefully Vladař’s injury doesn’t sideline him for a long period of time.
The Flyers also announced Rasmus Ristolainen suffered an upper-body injury prior to puck drop and was listed as day-to-day. Ristolainen participated in warmups, but Noah Juulsen eventually replaced the Finnish defenseman. This comes just as Jamie Drysdale returned to the lineup after missing three games due to an upper-body injury.
The injuries are out of the players’ control, but the players’ who are healthy and their lackluster performances of late is a direct result of why the Flyers are where they are recently. Matvei Michkov has one goal over his last 20 games and Sean Couturier scored once in his prior 22 outings. The turnovers, failures to strike on opportunities, and constant penalties need to be addressed if this Flyers club wants to be playoff contenders.
The Flyers took six undisciplined penalties against the Sabres which Buffalo cashed in twice on. For the occasions when Philadelphia had a power play, nothing happened. The Flyers were gifted the first power play after a rare hooking penalty called on Buffalo netminder Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and to no surprise, Philadelphia didn’t capitalize.
The Sabres’ power play was in shambles too despite entering the contest winning 13 of their previous 15 games. Buffalo had the chance to snap out of their special team skid once Cam York cross-checked Jason Zucker. The man who drew the penalty in Zucker set up shop down low to screen Vladař while Rasmus Dahlin’s bullseye shot found the back of the net. This was the sequence in which Vladař got hurt on. Rick Tocchet didn’t provide any update on Vladař.
Dahlin’s goal for the Sabres put Buffalo out in front in each of the three outings against the Flyers this season. Dahlin’s tally also marked the 31st 1-0 deficit for Philadelphia through 45 games thus far. The Sabres captain would net another power play goal in the second period.
Buffalo’s pressure ensued when Dahlin opened the scoring as Bowen Byram nearly finished on a setup pass from Jack Quinn that rang iron. The Sabres were the faster team and feasted upon Philadelphia’s miscues. Zegras softly threw a pass out in the neutral zone only for it to get intercepted by Josh Doan springing Buffalo the other way. Noah Östlund fed the puck over to Mattias Samuelsson around the hashmarks to add onto the Sabres’ lead. The Sabres scored twice on three shots.
Zegras hooked Doan later on to send the Sabres back to another 5-on-4 advantage. The Flyers managed to prevent the Sabres from scoring until Ryan McLeod skated behind the net and threaded a pass to an uncovered Quinn sitting alone in the slot. Quinn netted his seventh goal in 10 games against the Flyers and this one proved to be the game-winner.
“We’re not playing smart hockey. I know they had 14 shots, but they capitalized. We gave them the middle of the ice on three shots. We had moments when we aren’t delivering right now. That’s the key, that’s it,” Rick Tocchet said. “It’s uncharacteristic of the team right now.”
The only positive and noticeable performance for Philadelphia came from Owen Tippett. Midway through the second period, Tippett redirected the puck at center ice and made his way into the offensive zone firing a shot through Luukkonen for his 15th goal of the season.
Nikita Grebenkin set a slight screen on the play to earn a bit of revenge on Luukkonen who robbed him with a glove save in the first 6:05 of the game.
Tippett added an assist on Zegras’ power play goal that cut Buffalo’s lead in half with 12:23 remaining in the third period. Konecny’s no-look assist on the goal made it 22 points across his last 21 games for the 28-year-old winger. Zegras is on pace for 77 points which would bypass his career high with 65 back in the 2022-23 season. However, both Konecny and Zegras were a -3 rating in Buffalo.
The Flyers had a few late chances, but Juulsen caught iron. Philadelphia failed to score on another power play that McLeod iced the game on with the vacant cage and shorthanded. The Flyers went 1-for-5 on the power play and are riding an abysmal 4-for-36 blunder while on the man advantage.
It’s another outing for the Flyers (22-15-8) to learn from as they shift their attention to Thursday’s meeting with the Pittsburgh Penguins (21-14-10). The opening faceoff is set for 7:00 pm ET at PPG Paints Arena.
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