The Flyers Are Dead
Mike Leitao ~ 03/13/2024
It's a tough time in Philly for sports fans at the moment. Sure, the Eagles won the Super Bowl, but that was over a month ago and the victory has been passed on by now with free agency. That leaves Philly fans with two options, the god awful 76ers or the equally bad Flyers. The 76ers season is 100% more disappointing, a team with title aspirations heading into the season met with insane regression and insanely bad injury luck seriously derailed this team and made them absolutely not worth watching. The Flyers on the other hand were expected to be bad as a rebuilding team, but with a bevy of young and exciting players should at least make for an entertaining watch. As a Flyers season ticket holder, I’ve gotten to see them play in person a lot, and let me tell you it’s absolutely awful. Sure, there have been some good games throughout the year, but the last 3 games I’ve been unfortunate enough to go to have made me want death. This is a team without life, and if I had to sit through the hell that was these last 3 games then dammit y'all are going to have to listen to me complain.
For context, the NHL trade deadline was on Friday and the Flyers traded a few players for some future picks, one of them being Scott Laughton being traded to the Maple Leafs. Objectively, this was a good trade for the Flyers, but losing a clear cut locker room leader and beloved guy will have huge ripple effects which are super clear. This no longer looks like a team that has any interest in competing night in and night out. This looks like a team going through the motions trying to get through these last 20 or so games as quickly as possible so they can get to the offseason. Let’s start with their weekend clash versus the Kraken and their first game after the deadline. Although the Flyers suck, the Kraken are one of the few teams who suck more than the Flyers. This was an opportunity for the Flyers to pick up a nice home win to open the weekend and help the team morale. To make matters even better, the Flyers were playing arguably the worst goalie in the league and were favored, so a win in this game was expected. However, that is not what happened. Although the Flyers opened the scoring in the first, they played flat for basically the entire game, recording 8 less shots than their opponent and losing the game 4-1. The cherry on top for this game was the shorthanded goal by Seattle to make it 3-1. The refs called this game tight, giving the Kraken 3 power plays and the Flyers 5. The teams combined for a total of 0 power play goals, meaning in a game where goals for the Flyers seemed to come at a premium, they were unable to take advantage of a shit load of opportunities. Ok, so the Flyers played badly in that game, but it was right after an emotional trade deadline that there might be an excuse to the god awful play, but then they went out the very next to prove this was just the new Flyers.
The Flyers had a back to back situation this weekend and played against the New Jersey Devils on Sunday. With the Devils having not played Saturday and being a playoff team, this game was certainly going to be more difficult for the Flyers. However, the Devils were missing their best forward and defenseman and chose to play their backup goalie which means the Flyers have a chance. Of course, this backup goalie shutout a better version of this team earlier this season in January, so there was certainly still some reason for concern. From a penalty perspective, this game was not a tightly called contest like the game before, with each team only receiving one penalty during the game. Similarly, the box score shows a very close game that ended 3-1, but the last goal being an empty netter really means it was 2-1. Furthermore, the Flyers actually outshot the Devils meaning they played well but were just once again unable to score goals. This is why watching the games is so important, at no point in the game did the Flyers lead, they were down 2-0 with around 5 minutes left before finally scoring one to make the game look close. Just because the Flyers had more shots does not mean they played well, as most of these shots were weak easy saves for the goalie that really had no chance of going in. Only 16 of their 24 shots came from forwards, and if you exclude Michkov it becomes 11 of 19. That low of a percentage of shots from forwards shows that they were not putting themselves in a position to get quality opportunities.
So, both games this weekend were duds, and now they get another opportunity to play some decent hockey last night versus Ottawa. For the third time in a row, the Flyers are playing against a backup goalie meaning they should have a real shot at winning the game. This game can easily be summed up with two plays. First, Ottawa goes down and scores the opening goal just 24 seconds into the game. Then 8 seconds later the Flyers take a penalty to put them down a man. If that is not shooting yourself in the foot with a shotgun I don’t know what is. Similar to the Devils game, when looking at the shots the game appears closer than it really was. Once again, the Flyers seemed to rely heavily on bad shots the whole game, as of their 22 shots 11 of them were taken by defensemen.
It is incredibly difficult to win a game when your forwards are taking such few shots on goal. One improvement compared to the weekend though was the Flyers scored more than 1 goal, so that was fun. Down 3-2 in the third period, the Flyers then had one of the most Flyers type plays I have ever seen. Multiple great passes in the offensive zone led to a prime scoring opportunity that was then somehow blocked by a back checking player on Ottawa, making one of the best player saves you will ever see. It was a perfect example of Flyers hockey, that even when this team is playing great, they will somehow find a way to lose. The true highlight of this game was getting a free Gritty rubber ducky afterwards, though as I tried to get people hype leaving the game I noticed most people seemed rather annoyed, which although fair based on the recent level of play, tells me a lot of people at that game don’t seem to understand that this is just a bad hockey team and will be for quite some time most likely.
So what does any of this mean? Truthfully, I am not sure. The Flyers are not going to make the playoffs this year, so the worse they play the better their draft standing will be which is better for the future. The truth is that I do not expect to see the Flyers win a lot more games this year because they are normally a worse team than their opponent. What I want to see is just the team play like they are at least trying. Spending all that money to go to these games to watch your team play with no energy is more frustrating than watching them lose a close game, because at least the money spent resulted in some excitement when as of late, it has resulted in depression. Will this change? I doubt it, this team is about as soulless as 30 gingers, so at the end of the day this article is about as effective as the Flyers recent play, not at all.
