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Flyers' Brutal Slump Reaching Historic Lows with Loss to Lightning
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- Flyers' Brutal Slump Reaching Historic Lows with Loss to Lightning
After suffering yet another loss, a 4-1 decision at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night, the Philadelphia Flyers are officially having a historically bad start to their 2026-27 season.
The Lightning out-shot the Flyers 36-14 in their dominant win, putting the Flyers in some, well, pretty bad company through their first four games of the season.
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According to NBC Sports Philadelphia's broadcast team , only the 1970-71 Buffalo Sabres (-104) have had a worse shot on goal differential than the Flyers (-82) through the first four games of a season in NHL history.
The next two teams behind the Flyers were the 1991-92 Edmonton Oilers at -81, and the 2010-11 Anaheim Ducks at -80. In other words, it's been 16 years since the NHL has seen one of its teams outclassed by its opponents so badly to start a season.
Much like the games against Carolina and New Jersey, the Flyers looked like they might have had just enough juice to steal a point (or two), as a wonky deflection goal credited to Tyson Foerster pulled the Flyers within a goal, trailing 2-1 just under halfway through the second period.
That second period was the Flyers' best of the game, as they were outshot 10-3 and 15-4 in the first and third periods, respectively. Playing a few minutes of cohesive hockey isn't going to take any team, let alone the Flyers, very far.
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Brayden Point opened the scoring for the Lightning on a deflection after beating Trevor Zegras on a faceoff in Zegras's defensive zone, and Pontus Holmberg gave the Lightning a 2-0 lead just 17 seconds into the second period with Cam York slipping up in the neutral zone.
The Flyers went 0-for-3 on the power play, though Travis Konecny and Trevor Zegras believed it was fine after the Carolina game because they generated "looks" and just didn't execute.
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In a game where a Nikita Kucherov-led power play also went 0-for-3, special teams could have made the difference, but the Flyers had no spark or killer instinct to make it happen.
Some of that falls on coaching, yes, but pro athletes have to be natural competitors. Very few have looked the part four games into the season, giving away cheap standings points to Eastern Conference teams looking to make the playoffs.
The Lightning ended the game with exactly three minutes left, as David Jiricek made an ill-advised pass under pressure to turn the puck over, then got overzealous trying to defend Holmberg when Cam York was behind him in support.
Ilya Mikheyev scored the eventual wraparound after an awkward scramble, even with Travis Konecny and Sean Couturier in strong position to erase Jiricek's pair of mistakes defending Vladar's crease.
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No matter, though, because even if the Flyers survived and were able to pull the extra attacker to go 6-on-5 down 2-1, they probably wouldn't have scored anyway. Their power play and poise with the puck have given us no reason to believe otherwise.
Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet dropped a rather damning quote on his team in his postgame media availability, claiming, "This team is way too comfortable and they did not compete tonight."
It's the fourth game of the year, and we're questioning compete level, team mentality, and readiness to play.
If this downward spiral continues, it will be interesting to see where things go from here.
