Nov 2, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Boston Bruins right wing David Pastrnak (88) pushes the puck past Philadelphia Flyers right wing Bobby Brink (10) in the third period at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Ross-Imagn Images
You can see the frustration on their faces.
Morgan Frost takes a shot and rings one off the post.
Owen Tippett waits a nanosecond too long to slide a pass to a wide-open Frost and that allows Boston goalie Joonas Korpisalo make a sliding save.
Sean Couturier one-times a nifty pass from Scott Laughton from the door step, and is denied.
And with each one, there's a heavy sigh. A look to the heavens. A slumping of the shoulders.
This is what manifests itself when an entire team struggles to score.
You'll hear about guys gripping their sticks too tight, or trying to do too much, or trying to make a perfect pass when they should just shoot. And all of those things, and varying times are true.
But the overarching problem right now for the Flyers might just be that these guys are what they are.
Scoring four goals in three games doesn't tell the whole story. Getting shut out 3-0 by the Bruins as they did on Saturday doesn't either.
But when you have a starting lineup that usually features 14 former first round picks, you probably expect a little bit more.
Sure, some of them are certainly underperforming expectations to start the season, and we'll highlight that momentarily. but when it seems like it's a struggle to generate any sustained offense from one game to the next to the next, it's probably more of a sign of the overall ability of the roster and less a sign of underperformance.
Let's look at a few of biggest head-scratchers through the Flyers first 12 games of the season:
Morgan Frost might never score a National Hockey League goal again. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/bNe5SRWvlG
To be fair, Couturier has played very well in his last half-dozen games after a sluggish start, and Laughton is not counted on for a lot of offense, although the Flyers would love if he chipped in more.
Stil, that's six of your top nine forwards. The others are Travis Konecny, who leads the team in scoring with 10 points (even though he's a minus-9), rookie sensation Matvei Michkov, who has nine points, and a rotating cast of characters - sometimes Bobby Brink, sometimes Ryan Poehling, sometimes Garnett Hathaway.
So, the Flyers really need this group to be better. Tippett, Foerster, Frost and Farabee having a combined five goals through a dozen games is alarming. As of this writing there are 70 individual players in the NHL with at least five goals. Seventy! The Flyers need four of their top seven forwards to combine for five goals.
"We have chances to shoot, and we don't. It's an epidemic of shooting the puck wide," coach John Tortorella said. "It's a matter of getting some guys going. Our big wingers, Tip and Tyson. We got to get them going. Morgan Frost has a chance today. What if he scores a goal, then he relaxes? Guys have just not found their game offensively."
The question the Flyers should be asking themselves is, will they?
Frost has always seemed to be better in the second half of the year, and also in games with less at stake. But he's lacked consistency in his Flyers tenure. Foerster got off to a hot start last year but struggled down the stretch and barely made it to that 20-goal plateau. Tippett had a breakout year and should be a 30-goal scorer with ease with his speed and skill, but he's been the biggest victim of the epidemic of missing the net with his shots.
And then there's Farabee and Couturier, who Tortorella praised after the game as having played better, but just aren't getting rewarded.
"We've had a tough time developing offense but when we've developed chances we've had a tough time finishing, too," Tortorella said. "This is where we are at right now. Tyson and Tippett are two big guys for me. Our winger position - just to get them going will help us, but they're both fighting it at the same time. I look at the center ice position ... I think Coots has worked his ass off in the middle of the ice but it just hasn't developed into - other than that one game - a bunch of offense. The wingers are the strength of our team, we've got to find some sort of confidence with our wings. Beezer has played very well but has not been rewarded enough as far as goals."
They are going to have to find it soon, or else it's going to be a large, harsh winter for hockey in Philadelphia.
In a weird stretch of a couple minutes in the first period, Flyers goalie Sam Ersson had to have work done on his right skate, and then at the next stoppage was removed from the game. The Flyers said it's a lower body injury. They didn't offer more details after the game.
Sam Ersson heads down the tunnel and Kolosov enters the game. Unclear the exact reason, something to keep an eye on#LetsGoFlyers
pic.twitter.com/Kn8X3EOl5C
During the game a team source told On Pattison that the injury wasn't serious and that they removed Ersson out of caution, so he didn't hurt it more.
Aleksei Kolosov came in and made 20 saves on 22 shots. A tough spot for the young goalie who has all of one game of NHL experience, and he played well enough to keep the Flyers in the game.
The Flyers were considering sending third string goalie Ivan Fedotov out on a conditioning assignment in the next day or two, but that might be put on hold if Ersson has to miss even one game.
