Kings 5, Flyers 0: Demoralizing defeat to never think about again

After slaying the Buffalo Sabres on Friday night, the Philadelphia Flyers hosted the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday and proceeded to get stomped all over on home turf. The Kings won their visit to Philadelphia by a score of 5-0. The Flyers were shutout for the first time this season.

The Basics

First period: 14:32 -- Kempe (Byfield, Gavrikov), 14:50 -- Kopitar (Roy, Byfield)

Second period: 16:01 -- Kaliyev (Byfield, Moore), 19:44 -- Moore (Kaliyev)

Third period : 6:32 -- Lizotte (Laferriere)

SOG: 30 (LAK) – 24 (PHI)

Some takeaways

Bad

This game was bad. It feels like something that was coming for a while. The Flyers kept on pounding the pavement -- the stomping force that would run through some teams and take advantage of those unprepared. This team caught so many good teams by surprise or were able to just simply overpower anyone no matter how ready their opponent was. But tonight, while hosting the Kings, it felt like something inevitable.

These Flyers have been good while also losing hockey games -- we know that sounds really stupid -- in the sense that everything but good goaltending and top-end finishing was missing from their 60-minute effort. Against Los Angeles, it was everything we thought that this team was going to be heading into the season. A mess. A disaster. A stumbling fool of an ice hockey team.

As we have already said, this was bound to happen. A loss like this after their other feel-good losses happened, was going to reveal its ugly head and just demoralize the entire group. This wasn\'t a loss where us people on the outside can look at it and take good and positive things to look forward to from -- it was a loss to just wipe away clean and never think about again.

Leaving holes on the ice

In reality, simply saying that the Flyers were just bad is just a tad bit unfair. They tried, at least. It was just the little cuts that killed them and the Kings\' ability to take advantage of those mistakes and score multiple goals off of them.

While having just a six-shot difference isn\'t necessarily bad, the Kings had a whopping 13-4 advantage in the high-danger shot attempts department at 5-on-5. Los Angeles was just able to simply walk to the front of the net and pot in a couple goals per period on their former teammate Cal Petersen.

We truly don\'t know what else to say about this game. Were the special teams bad? Yeah. They started the game with a decent penalty kill but everything went downhill from that. And that might be the only glimmer of something positive to write about this game.

We\'re tired. It\'s the weekend. We\'re giving you a break and for you to never think about this hockey game again. Don\'t dwell on it. We won\'t either.

Talking Points