For a second there, it seemed like everything was breaking their way.
When the Flyers headed into the locker room at the end of the first period, with a 1-0 lead over the Blue Jackets and a host of their competition for playoff spots in the Eastern Conference losing their games at the same time, it seemed like they had all the momentum.
Sean Couturier scored his eighth goal of the year while looking like his old self, and the Flyers largely dominated a period that could have seen them up three after 20 minutes if they finished some earlier chances.
A team that rarely scores the first goal came out and did just that in their biggest game of the year, and even still, it all evaporated just 2:28 into the second frame.
Flyers lose the big game, once again
The Flyers were unable to follow up their strong first period, fell behind, and were unable to get their offense back into gear before falling to the Blue Jackets by a score of 3-2.
They went into the game with a chance to close the gap to Columbus to just three points, while drawing closer to both the Bruins and Red Wings at the same time. Making the playoffs still seemed like it a longshot, but the sweep of the California road trip brought some life back into the chase.
The 3-2 loss to Columbus, in a vacuum, is nothing more than a confirmation of what most already knew: the Flyers aren’t good enough to make the playoffs, and even if they did sneak in, it would probably be over pretty quickly.
But when juxtaposed against a reality where the franchise is set to miss the playoffs for the sixth straight year, it starts to look more like the continuation of a trend.
Just this week I wrote an article about how the Flyers have failed at basically every meaningful hurdle they’ve faced over the past decade and change. But what I mostly left out were the more specific moments that stretch back over the years where when the eyes of the city were on the Flyers, they just could not get the job done. There was some hope heading into this contest in some Philly-centric circles, you could feel the hope in the building throughout the game, the Flyers were even cheered off the ice after what was one of their better first periods of the season.
But it was all for naught. The little glimmer of hope for this entire Flyers season shined for just under 23 minutes of game time before it was extinguished, and the reality of what this Flyers season truly is came back into view.
Now that this ill-fated playoff push is all but over, the Flyers will be left in the exact same position that they found themselves in at the end of last season: on the outside looking in, with a first-round pick that will likely fall in the teens, in a draft where the top 10 is very highly touted.
The team had one off-ramp to make this a successful season, but instead now they are left with the reality that:
- Matvei Michkov had a sophomore slump
- Sean Couturier is your captain but has declined to being the fourth-line center
- No top 10 draft pick (pending)
- The head coach has already become a lightning rod topic in his first year
- Again, no playoff experience for the youth
But maybe the most disappointing fact to come out of this game is that when the chips were down and the team needed their best players to pull it out, none were there to be found. It was the fourth line of Glendening-Couturier-Hathaway that generated the most havoc in the offensive zone. While Owen Tippett also looked dangerous, and Noah Cates and Michkov had some chances, the rest of the stars, the guys you rely on, just didn’t come through. Zegras, Konecny, and outside of his fight, Christian Dvorak, were all largely absent when you needed them most.
They had their chance to make a moment to remember, and to energize a fanbase that has been lulled into slumber by underperformance. That moment has passed.
