Well, so much for a revitalized power play, or much of a spark.
The Flyers got jumped for two shorthanded goals and still lacked any kind of finish in front of the net to lose to the Washington Capitals, 4-1, Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center – in the first of a home-and-home back-to-back.
Sam Ersson gave them a chance once again, stopping 16 of 18 shots through two periods (25 of 29 in total), but slow reads and mishandlings of the puck at the offensive blue line while on the man advantage – resulting directly in Washington goals – along with a failure to recover despite some solid even strength play for most of the game did them in again.
The Flyers are 1-4-1, now having lost five straight across regulation and overtime. They have only scored once in front of the home crowd after two games, haven't scored on the power play since last week's loss to Seattle on the road (haven't held a lead since either), and obviously, haven't won since the season opener in Vancouver.
It's hardly the start that anyone in the organization had in mind.
But that's just the way the bounces have gone for them so far, as boos rained down from an emptying arena as the final seconds ticked down.
"They want to play well," head coach John Tortorella said of his team postgame. "They want to win a hockey game. They want to score a goal in the home building. You can't let the frustration turn into cheating. You can't forget about your structure as we're going through this.
"It's kind of doubled up because it's the start of the year and we're in this jam, so there's even more pressure. But we just have to play the way we're supposed to play within our structure. Hopefully we get some good things to happen and we just gain our confidence a little bit."
That just wasn't happening on Tuesday night.
Sean Couturier, in his move back to center, rifled a shot off the crossbar from a neutral zone turnover seconds in, then the Flyers got their first power play look a couple of minutes later when Washington's Alex Ovechkin got tagged for interference on Garnet Hathaway at center ice.
Rotten luck struck with about 30 seconds left on the advantage.
The puck wrapped down to defenseman Egor Zamula by the boards at the blue line, but trying to control it with a kick of his skate, he instead bounced it straight to the Capitals' Nic Dowd, who chipped it by then took off for the Flyers' net, beating Ersson with a move and a nasty backhander top shelf to make it 1-0, Washington not even five minutes in.
The Flyers were operating from behind from there, and try as they might, they struggled to swing that clean look or bounce that they needed to shift the momentum or, at the least, just get them on the board through the first two periods.
Nic Deslauriers hopped on the ice and immediately dropped the gloves with the Capitals' Dylan McIlrath in a straight-up slugfest hoping it offered a jolt, but that just as quickly got canceled out by a Travis Konecny slash in the offensive zone that put the Flyers on the penalty kill.
Hathaway sprung Konecny out of the box as the penalty expired with a stretch pass from the defensive zone all the way to the far blue line that the winger had to dive after to stop, yet still with time to move in and get a shot off, but once he got up, he placed a shot that Capitals goaltender Charlie Lindgren kicked away with his pad.
Scott Laughton – who made the lineup in time after he and his wife welcomed their first child into the world earlier in the day – chased down a lob over center ice while the Flyers were killing off a Nick Seeler high-sticking call later in the period, and broke toward the net but with a shot that sailed wide.
Bobby Brink snuck to the front of the crease on a heads-up chip of the puck out from behind the net from Ryan Poehling, but a slash from Washington's Pierre Luc-Dubois and a last-second nab of the glove on the backhand from Lindgren kept the Flyers off the board, though at the cost of a penalty.
Then struck rotten luck again.
Connor McMichael caught Brink playing with the puck for too long by the left point and stripped it away from him, shifting the Capitals into transition. Zamula lost his assignment as Andrew Mangiapane came streaking down through the middle unmarked, and all McMichael had to do was flip it to him from off the wall to leave Mangiapane all alone with the shot to beat Ersson to make it 2-0.
"Our second unit on the power play hurts us," Tortorella said. "They score on two breakaways, we don't. In the first period, it's 2-0. I don't think we played bad the first couple of periods – the chances were basically even – we just don't finish."
And the Flyers seemed increasingly aware of that, pressing into the second period with frustrations appearing to grow, but nothing amounted from it.
Matvei Michkov, who hasn't scored since he did it twice in that third game at Edmonton, continued to show flashes of his high-end skill, but his line with Couturier and Owen Tippett continually got themselves tied up in traffic trying to make something happen.
In the third, after offsetting roughing penalties from a scrum at the end of the second period put the teams at 4-on-4 with Konecny and Jakob Chychrun in the box, something finally broke.
Michkov and Cam York cycled it around to Travis Sanheim with a clean look from the left point, and the defenseman's shot beat Lindgren to the top corner to finally give the Flyers one, and the fans, briefly, something to cheer about...
Then the Capitals came right back down the ice to go back up two, 3-1. Dylan Strome knocked the puck away from Jamie Drysdale while he was trying to shield it at the blue line, and on the zone entry, Capitals defenseman John Carlson threw the puck to the front of the net as Strome crashed down.
The puck bounced off Strome and in, Zamula wanted to play the stick lift but was too late to it. It was a brutal night for him, in what's quickly becoming a brutal season for the young Russian blueliner.
"The third one, you could just feel the bench," Tortorella said of the dejection.
"Sometimes you need to play just simple hockey," Zamula said of his performance from the locker room postgame. "Mistakes, you need to be better."
And it's become a brutal stretch for the Flyers in general.
There was no coming back from Strome's goal to put the Capitals back up two, and with just under six minutes left, Chychrun fired one more through.
The Flyers will be right back at it on Wednesday night down in Washington, just hoping now that they can get something to fully break the right way.
"It's gonna come," Sanheim, the Flyers' lone goal-scorer on the night, said. "It's early in the season. I'm not too worried about it. There are a lot of guys in this room that are goal-scorers. We're gonna get going here. I'm not worried at all."
"We just gotta get up in the morning and start again," Tortorella said.
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