Flyers may have been eliminated on Tuesday, but losing streak really killed the playoff dream

Sam Ersson didn’t leave the Wells Fargo Center ice on Tuesday evening as a loser.

Sure, he technically was saddled with a loss, more due to an NHL stat quirk than anything else. But when he exited the Flyers’ net with under four minutes remaining, his club was not trailing. The score was tied 1-1. Washington’s game-winning goal by T.J. Oshie would occur with Ersson sitting on the bench, and no goalie in net for the Flyers.

Why? Due to pre-game circumstances, the Flyers knew that an overtime or shootout win would do them no good in their longshot bid for a playoff berth. They didn’t merely have to beat the Capitals — they had to beat them in regulation, not allowing their opponent even a loser point.

“It was like going in being down by one goal,” Ersson said after the game.

That’s exactly what it was like — both technically, and metaphorically. Because as it turns out, the Flyers could have won Tuesday’s game by ten goals and still wouldn’t have punched their ticket into the playoffs. Detroit’s game-tying tally versus Montreal with 3.3 seconds remaining in regulation would have eliminated the Flyers anyway, hammering home one undeniable truth:

Philadelphia’s playoff hopes may have officially died on Tuesday night around 9:30 PM. But they truly passed away days ago, due to the eight-game losing streak that saw the club squander its significant playoff advantage and throw the race back up for grabs in the first place.

And while the players acknowledged they could take at least some pride in their strong finish to the season — including their hard-fought effort in Game 82 that ended in a 2-1 defeat — they all knew what really had cost them their season-long goal.

“Obviously, it’s tough to really swallow, and accept the fact that we were in such a good position a couple weeks ago, and just couldn’t get it done,” captain Sean Couturier said.

In isolation, Tuesday was far from an embarrassing night for the Flyers. Sure, they started out a bit slow — head coach John Tortorella used the words “tentative” and “tight” to describe their early play, befitting a club with over half of its game-day roster lacking NHL playoff experience. But as the night progressed, the Flyers from Games 80 and 81 reemerged. They shook off an early disallowed goal — more the result of bad luck than an incorrect NHL decision, given the premature whistle that caused the confusing sequence in the first place — and a first period Alex Ovechkin goal, and took full control of the second half of the second period, ultimately breaking through with an Erik Johnson goal. As for the defense, they ultimately held Washington to a mere 18 shots on goal.

“I thought we played a good game tonight. Kept it tight,” Couturier contended.

He wasn’t wrong. The Flyers played well enough to win this game. They skated well, checked hard, and led in all of the 5-on-5 advanced metric categories, despite Tortorella’s questionable decision to sit Morgan Frost and Bobby Brink (and Cam Atkinson) for the entire second half of the game, dropping two of his most talented offensive weapons out of the rotation on a night when the club was in desperate need of goals.

Had the Flyers not entered the evening with one metaphorical arm tied behind their back, needing to win in regulation at all costs, perhaps they would have eked out a dramatic victory in overtime or a shootout.

Alas, due to the consequences of their own actions, they didn’t even have the chance.

And all the players knew it.

Out of the four that spoke after Tuesday’s loss — Couturier, Ersson, Johnson and Scott Laughton — every single one of them mentioned some variation of “no one gave us a chance.” The Flyers relished proving their doubters wrong all year long. And for 74 games, they successfully did just that.

But in those hideous eight, they turned into exactly what all of those despised doubters always thought they were. And it cost them dearly.

Sure, there were legitimate reasons for the swoon. The goaltending, run down in the wake of Carter Hart’s leave of absence and subsequent sexual assault charge, understandably wilted. A defense corps ravaged by injuries and the deadline trade of its best transition defenseman (Sean Walker) struggled mightily to put the forwards in positions to attack via the team’s season-long calling card: rush-based offense. It neutering the team’s scoring, contributing to the fact that the team scored two or fewer goals in six of their last nine games.

But over a six-game stretch, they still lost to Chicago, Buffalo, Columbus and Montreal twice — 3-4 standings points out of those games should have been a breeze, even for a weakened Flyers team.

Instead, they collected zero.

Even Couturier, who on multiple occasions over the past week pushed back hard against the “they’re quitters” narrative that popped up in media and fan circles as a result of the skid, admitted that the 9-3 loss to Montreal the previous week was the one real anomaly of their season.

“We fought all year long, even through (that) eight game stretch, other than the Montreal (game), which was a tough one,” he noted.

Had they won even one of those five games against non-playoff opponents during the eight-game skid, they would have entered Tuesday with 89 points, making the matchup with the Capitals a true win-and-in game, not one that required the coaching staff to go nuclear and pull Ersson in a tie game. And just as importantly, they wouldn’t have been eliminated by Detroit’s late-in-regulation heroics.

The Flyers had already dug their grave. On Tuesday, they just finally fell into it.

The final three games of Philadelphia’s season will allow them to enter the summer with their dignity intact. After all, despite the ugliness of the Montreal game, they didn’t quit. They didn’t mutiny on their coach. Instead, they regrouped as a collective whole, took down the eventual Presidents’ Trophy winners on the road, and remained relevant enough to the end to put a dagger through the aspirations of two other playoff hopefuls as a direct result of their unorthodox (but completely justified) goalie pull, which Tortorella noted after the game he had executed without knowing that the Flyers had already been eliminated by Detroit’s near simultaneous game-tying tally.

“I think you can look around the whole room, and say everyone could look in the mirror after Game 82 and say they gave it their all,” Johnson said. “The guys should be really proud.”

And in many ways, trade deadline acquisition Johnson is right. The Flyers did exceed expectations this season. Key youngsters like Tyson Foerster and Cam York and Joel Farabee (who did set career highs in goals, assists and points despite an ugly final two months) and even Ersson took major steps forward in their development. General manager Daniel Briere boosted the long-term rebuild plan by turning 2023 Kings cap dump Sean Walker into a 2025 first round pick, a prime future asset. Rookies and young players were able to get a taste of high-stakes NHL hockey, and perhaps as a result, will be looser the next time they face it.

There was quite a lot of good from the 2023-24 for the Flyers, and just because it didn’t end in a playoff berth or a guaranteed top-5 draft pick doesn’t mean it was a waste of time.

“I’m proud of the team. They fought to the end,” Tortorella affirmed.

But this was a missed opportunity. And unsurprisingly, it was felt deepest by the veterans, the ones who know that there are only so many chances a player has in a career.

“I’m not getting any younger,” the 31-year old Couturier frankly admitted. “Sometimes, when you’re young, and we’ve had some great teams, you think the core is going to be there forever, and you’re going to be on the winning side of things forever. It changes quick.”

The Flyers could have gotten their youngsters actual playoff experience, which Tortorella pointed out repeatedly over the 48 hours leading up Tuesday’s puck drop (and even after the final buzzer) is far different than these “playoff-ish” regular season games. They could have fired up a fanbase still in need of further convincing that the organization is actually back on the right track. And they could have achieved their own individual team goals, which clearly included a playoff berth.

It was Laughton — the Flyers lifer and team leader — who took the loss hardest out of all the players who spoke after the game. And it was little shock. Erik Johnson already has a Stanley Cup ring, and by his own admission, is past his peak and in the twilight of his career, content to play a supporting role on competitive clubs with tight locker rooms in fun cities. Ersson is a rookie, still naive enough to believe that an endless amount of chances await him in what he surely thinks is destined to be a bright NHL future. Even Couturier has the security of a no-movement clause and six more years left on a contract with an unmovable $7.75 million cap hit.

Laughton, on the other hand, has never been past the second round of the playoffs. He’s also been in trade rumors for years now, helped by the fact that he doesn’t have an NMC or even an NTC. According to Briere, he was kept at the deadline in no small part because Laughton’s teammates lobbied for Laughton to stick around for this playoff run, believing he both needed to be a part of it, and deserved to be a part of it. There’s no guarantee he gets traded this summer — but there’s no guarantee he doesn’t, either.

Laughton surely knows there’s a non-zero possibility this could have been his last hurrah in Philadelphia. And due to one ugly, out-of-nowhere losing streak, it ended in Game 82 rather than after a rewarding postseason run.

“You’re in the playoffs all year, you get out, and it’s tough. It’s tough. It’s a tough pill to swallow. This one’s probably the toughest,” he said.

But that pill wasn’t swallowed on Tuesday night. It was ingested sometime between March 28 and April 9, the dates of the two losses to the Canadiens, the heart of the streak. The capsule’s breaking may have been delayed a bit, due to the hard work, guts and pride of the Flyers over the past week.

But it broke all the same on Tuesday, and with it, so did the Flyers’ playoff dream.