Devils 3, Flyers 0: Unperfect 10

The Flyers lost again.

You’re used to this at this point, because this is the 10th game in a row that the Flyers lost. It was a 3-0 loss to the New Jersey Devilsl It was their second loss to the aforementioned Devils (who are from Jersey, as we learned from their very striped jerseys that in fact say the word Jersey on them) during said 10-game losing streak. (In between these two very easy wins over the Flyers, the Devils took four straight losses.)

The things we saw and did not see in this game are the same things we have seen and not seen from the Flyers in basically every game they’ve played for the last three weeks.

The offense was just about nonexistent. On a season already full of toothless offensive performances, this one was a full-on trip to the dentist.

The passing didn’t work in any area of the ice — the breakout, the offensive zone, defensively, anywhere a player can have the puck on his stick. Even by the low standards the Flyers have set for themselves this year, this one really looked like a team full of dudes who have never played a game together.

Defensively, things were sloppy. Not as downright disastrous as they’ve been in other games during this streak — they did only give up two goals with a goalie in the net, after all, though they did use a successful challenge to negate a third due to a clear offsides that happened well before the defensive breakdown that led to the puck going in the net — but nonetheless sloppy. The aforementioned passing problems contribute here big time, as bad things tend to happen when a team that doesn’t know how to cover in the defensive zone can’t pass its way out of the defensive zone.

And the goaltending ... Carter Hart was fine. Not amazing, not bad, fine. One goal you’d probably like him to stop, one that it didn’t look like he had much of a chance on. Ironically, his worst moment of the night was probably one where the puck didn’t even go in the net.

But it’s not like he was a glaring problem, nor could he have done literally anything to win the game for the team that could not be bothered to score a goal in front of him.

And that’s it. What, you want to see the goals? Sure. Fortunately, this part of the recap is not terribly long.

Ultimately, if you came away from Mike Yeo’s debut on Monday night saying “hmm, well there was some juice in this game, maybe the team will get something out of this coaching change,” this game was a bit of a knock on the head. Mike Yeo will get his chance to show that he can do a better job with this group than Alain Vigneault did, but while no one should realistically have expected everything to change overnight with him taking over, this game does serve as a reminder that it’s gonna take a lot more than changing the coach to get things to even begin moving in the right direction. And while it’s also true that the schedule is going to get easier going forward, but then again, every team the Flyers have on the schedule is now going to see them as an easy win, too.

So much to fix. So little time. Fortunately for Yeo, it looks less and less like he’s going to have the pressure of a playoff chase hanging over him as he tries to right this ship.

Back-to-back out west this weekend, starting with a Friday night in Vegas. See you there, if you’re a sicko like us who are still here watching. Go Flyers.