The Flyers got taken into the shootout Tuesday night in Columbus, and couldn't crack Blue Jackets goaltender Daniil Tarasov once there.
They lost, 3-2, still walking away with the overtime point, but only after a late lead slipped on a neutral zone takeaway and one-time goal from Kirill Marchenko to Zach Werenski.
The Flyers are 19-20-6 on the season after Tuesday night, and sit four points behind Columbus for the last Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference.
They are 2-0-1 in their last three games, though, following the major wins at home over Anaheim and then Florida, and are at the start of a big stretch to close out January that will more than likely dictate where this season is going to go for them.
Here are a few thoughts on the Flyers ahead of the next rung of it on Thursday night in Elmont against the Islanders...
'Enough's enough' in goal
Sam Ersson responded to last week's rough night against the Stars with a shutout of the Ducks.
Then, as the Flyers were trying to hold on to their comeback attempt late over the Panthers, he made a huge save...and then another...and another...and another.
Ersson had a rough opening period on Monday night against Florida, too, in what has already been an uneven season for him marred by injury, but he rebounded from that second period onward. Credit to the skaters in front of him, also, as they did an excellent job in blocking shots and clogging lanes as the Panthers were pressing late.
But that flurry of saves Ersson made on Anton Lundell to preserve that one-goal lead with the clock ticking down on Monday night, that was clutch, and with the way the Flyers' goaltending situation has been of late, it was a boost the team badly needed.
"Enough's enough with goaltending," head coach John Tortorella said afterward. "We need to be better and I hope Ers was trying to make a statement there."
Since returning to the crease from injury, Ersson has gone 2-1-0 with a .910 save percentage across the three starts against Dallas, Anaheim, and Florida – keeping in mind that the Dallas game didn't go well for much of anyone on the team.
If the Flyers are going to have any sustained stability in goal, it's going to have to start with Ersson as the No. 1 in their current plan.
As for behind him, Ivan Fedotov, in his current look as the No. 2 option, put in a mostly solid night against Columbus, stopping 26 of 28 shots before the shootout. He also gave the Flyers a chance in both of their down-to-the-wire battles against Toronto a week ago after a month on the shelf to give Aleksei Kolosov a run.
"Big saves," Tortorella said of Fedotov's effort following Tuesday night's loss. "Again, he's gone through a lot, being in and out, shuffled to three. Now he's come back in and he made some big saves tonight."
Which puts the Flyers' goaltending picture, at least within the scope of this season, in a weird spot...again.
They'll probably stick with Ersson at the top so long as he's healthy, but he can't play every game. Tortorella, by his own admission, tried to when they were pushing for the playoffs last season and had no one else to call on. The result was Ersson running out of gas.
Fedotov has had his struggles before this recent stretch, and Kolosov, as a 23-year-old netminder, hit a wall in his first go at the NHL with a high degree of uncertainty over what the next step in his development can be – see back to the summer's rumors and speculation that he would stay in the KHL and his native Belarus if reporting to North America meant time in the AHL with the Phantoms.
The Flyers are still carrying all three goalies as of Wednesday, but how exactly they're going to proceed with them isn't clear, at least to the outside.
Granted, uncertainty in goal at this rate, going back decades, is just Flyers hockey for you.
Brink's break?
The line of Tyson Foerster, Noah Cates, and Bobby Brink has been a two-way force for the Flyers of late, but after Monday night's win over Florida, Tortorella said if there's anything he'd like to see them fix or improve, it'd be to get Brink on the scoresheet.
Tuesday night in Columbus, Cates drew defenders away with a screen in front of the net, Nick Seeler sent a crisp pass through the ice that opened up, and Brink had drifted in from the corner unnoticed to tap the puck in for the game's opening goal.
There it was.
Brink has been a pretty active and involved skater on that line with Cates and Foerster, but the production in terms of actual numbers has escaped him – though, that can be said of more than a few guys on this team right now.
Maybe this is his break.
"We'll find out," Tortorella said postgame Tuesday night.
"It's never fun to not be scoring goals," Brink said from the visiting locker room in Columbus. "I mean, I thought I had chances and I was playing decent, but just pucks weren't going in, so it was nice to see one go in."
Frost's, too?
You can put Morgan Frost in that camp of snakebitten players, but suddenly, the center has three goals, two assists (five points), and a plus-2 rating over his last four games, which includes the tying goal against the Panthers on Monday night, when he cleaned up a bounce in front on a beautiful power-play string set up by Jamie Drysdale and Matvei Michkov.
A slow starter, maybe.
Frost also jumped on a solid move upon the zone entry of Owen Tippett's third-period goal on Tuesday night, when he took a stride ahead off the pass to begin splitting the defense, which muddied up the goalie's read and gave Tippett time and space to go for the shot.
The energy in the building
Saturday against the Ducks, obviously because of the Cutter Gauthier angle, was easily the most energy a crowd at the Wells Fargo Center had for a hockey game in years, and the Flyers rose to the occasion with a 6-0 pummeling.
The Panthers game a couple of nights later, at the start, felt back to business as usual. You could see the empty seats and fans didn't carry that same level of engagement. The Flyers were back to being the inconsistent, building team that had to earn back every bit of the city's attention again, up until Noah Cates and his teammates rallied to get the building going again in another impressive win.
Star rookie Matvei Michkov said after Saturday's game, and everything it brought, that it was the best crowd he had seen yet.
Travis Konecny, who has been here through a lot of good and bad now, noted it was good to see that level of backing again, especially for the younger players who hadn't gotten to experience it yet.
And then Tortorella, bluntly, said he wanted that energy back, but next time, for something that truly mattered.
"I want it to be that we're a team to be reckoned with in a playoff series or whatever it may be," he said. "Not this s---."
But it might still be a while before that moment finally comes.
The key thing for now is: These Flyers know now that they can get that level of support, and they have a taste of what it's like to play within it, when everyone's behind them.
They can get back there, to the roaring crowds of orange and black, and the unprompted chants that just make it miserable for the other team to play.
And hopefully, when they do, they keep it for good.
MORE: Noah Cates is stepping up for the Flyers with the 'door open' at center
The Quarter-Century Team
The NHL has been marking the start of 2025 with the selection of Quarter-Century teams for every club in the NHL.
The Flyers had theirs released on Monday ahead of the Panthers game, which is as shown below:
I don't disagree too much with the selections here, but my quick two cents:
• I would've given the last second-team nod on defense to Braydon Coburn instead of Provorov. He was a steady – and for a while, underrated – defenseman for a lot of games through the Flyers' big retooling for the 2007-08 season, the miracle run to the Cup Final in 2010, the shift to Claude Giroux as the face of the team in 2012, and then into those mid-2010 years when the franchise started drowning in mediocrity.
I think he did and saw more than Provorov, and I would probably even argue Shayne Gostisbehere for how impactful he was at first over Provorov, too.
• Goalie was always going to be tricky for this. Brian Boucher was steady, also, and Roman Čechmánek had that bonkers year in 2003. The picks make sense when most of the past 25 years for the team have been engulfed in goaltending chaos.
I think Steve Mason might've had a case though, and maybe if the Flyers win that Game 7 over the Rangers in 2014, it would've been strong enough.
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