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The Philadelphia Flyers (22-15-8) have lost three straight games in regulation. In some ways, Wednesday’s 5-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres was a worse performance than Monday’s 5-1 defeat at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Honestly, it is tempting to greatly simplify the postgame “Good, Bad, and Ugly” column. The best aspect was that Wednesday’s game eventually ended. Nearly everything of significance was badly executed. The array of structural breakdowns, mental mistakes, growing injury list and fragile psyche were ugly to behold.
Want to simplify it even further? January swoons are a Flyers tradition. Even when the team was a perennial playoff club, January his historically been a low point of many seasons. Meanwhile, in some ways, this one has been worse. The team frequently does its California trip right after New Year’s Day. That’s often where the team’s January troubles start. This season, the California trip isn’t until March. The Flyers have entirely been in the East Coast since New Year’s Day, with four of the last five games being at home.
The good
- Owen Tippett (1G, 1A) was one of the very few Flyers who had a decent game on Wednesday. The streaky winger has scored a goal in two of his last three games. The team needs him to get on a roll offensively.
- Trevor Zegras entered the game pointless in four of his previous five games. The exception: his two scintillating power play goals against Anaheim. On Wednesday, he provided a short-lived glimmer of comeback hope in the third period. Zegras drove the net and had the puck legally deflect off his skate (no kicking motion). The team got a desperately needed power play goal. It’s something off which the club needs to build.
- Jamie Drysdale returned to the lineup after missing the three previous games.
- The Flyers gave up just 14 shots for the game and generated 22. The issue was when the Flyers broke down, they REALLY broken down.
The bad
- What happened to the Flyers’ structure? That’s the No. 1 thing that enabled the club to avoid back-to-back regulation losses (with one exception) for the first half of the 2025-26 regular season. The structure has fallen apart at key junctures in the last three games. On Wednesday, believe it or not, the Flyers actually outchanced Buffalo across all game situations according to Natural Stat Trick (30-22 overall, 12-11 high danger). It made no difference. When Philly had breakdowns, they paid dearly.
- The Flyers had too many sloppy turnovers. Some were downright egregious. The goaltending has been leaky but, at least on Wednesday, the play in front of the netminders was an equal — or bigger — culprit.
The ugly
- Dan Vladar got up gingerly in making a first-period pad save. He finished the periods but had to exit the game. The team is in deep trouble if he misses an extended period of time.
- The Flyers penalty kill has sprung a leak. They’ve frequently allowed multiple opposing power play goals per game of late. Meanwhile, Zegras’ goal aside, the power play continues to struggle. It dates back to the start of December.
- The body language on the bench and the ice. Specifically, in the first period, Nikita Grebenkin was robbed on a 10-bell save by Ukko-Pekka Luukonen. Those things happen. However, the response to the play was concerning: dropped heads, slumped shoulders, eyes rolling skyward. Rather than doubling down on the process that led to the chance, the Flyers showed signs of frustration.
- This bears repeating: the cliche that teams need to show desperation is 100 percent wrong. Teams need focused urgency. They don’t need despair. True desperation leads to compounding errors. It leads to bad penalties, unforced turnovers, back-door goals, over-passing and loss of resiliency. All teams go through ebbs and flows. Want to minimize the ebbs? Play with focus and urgency. Manufacture energy. Make life uncomfortable for the opponent. Right now, the Flyers are not doing any of these things. They’re giving in to despair.
Flyers lineup
Trevor Zegras – Christian Dvorak – Travis Konencny
Matvei Michkov – Sean Couturier – Carl Grundstrom
Nikita Grebenkin – Noah Cates – Owen Tippett
Nicolas Deslauriers – Rodrigo Abols – Garnet Hathaway
Cam York — Travis Sanheim
Emil Andrae — Jamie Drysdale
Nick Seeler — Noah Juulsen
Dan Vladar — exited after one period
[Samuel Ersson]
Postgame reaction
Head coach Rick Tocchet
