Once a Strength, Flyers’ Offense has Become Biggest Problem in Winless Start: ‘We’re Not as Sharp’

Five goals in four games. That’s it, five goals.

The Flyers sit at 0-2-2 after a 4-1 loss at the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday, their first four-game winless start since the 2014-15 season. Two of those five goals came from defensemen, and one of them came with the goalie pulled for an extra attacker.

The Flyers have taken only 76 shots and allowed 158. That minus-82 differential is the second worst in the NHL since 1959-60.

The offensive malaise starts with the puck never making it to Flyers on passes. Passing was a strength last season and looked sharp in the preseason. Once the games started counting, the passing completely vanished, and what was once the Flyers’ meal ticket has become the biggest problem. Against the New Jersey Devils in Game 2 of the season, the Flyers gave the puck away 23 times while New Jersey recorded seven takeaways, so most of those turnovers were unforced ones, which is unacceptable.

The Flyers lose board battles and are getting regularly outhustled. A team that can’t take care of the puck or pass the puck is going to have struggles getting any pucks on net, as the Flyers are. Rick Tocchet saw it coming after the 7-0 opening loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sept. 30, and the three games since have backed him up.

“I just feel like to have offense, you have to have the puck,” Tocchet said.

The tape is out on the Flyers. Pittsburgh brought an intense forecheck to pressure the Flyers’ breakouts and changed its look on every entry. New Jersey sent help to the wall and waited for a bad pass, which the Flyers were happy to supply to them. Right now every clearing pass becomes another shift in the defensive zone, and never allows the forwards to start breakouts or spend any real time with the puck at the other end.

Under Tocchet, the Flyers averaged 23 shots per game. Through four games, they are averaging 19, the second-fewest in the NHL. After three games, they had allowed 49 high-danger chances and created only 24. The game in Tampa was the low point, with only 14 shots. Asked about the disconnect on the way up the ice, Tocchet pointed to an 18-foot pass as the biggest example of the breakdown. Sean Couturier saw the same picture after practice on Sunday.

“I think structure-wise, we’re not as sharp, we don’t seem to be on the same page,” Couturier said.

Teams that struggle at five-on-five tend to lean on the man advantage to get themselves going, and the Flyers just can’t do that. They are 0-for-11 this season and have ranked last in the league on the power play in four of the past five seasons. They went 0-for-5 against the Carolina Hurricanes, including a 4-on-3 to open overtime, and put four shots on goal across three chances in Tampa. The power play unit loses faceoffs at an alarming rate when it has the man advantage, so it rarely gets set. This has already lead to a short handed goal this season.

What scoring the Flyers have found has come from the back end. Travis Sanheim has a hand in three of the five goals. His shot deflected off Rasmus Ristolainen‘s stick against the Devils, he scored one of his own in the third period of that game, and he found a streaking Matvei Michkov against Carolina. Owen Tippett‘s goal that night came from sheer effort between the circles. In Tampa, Tyson Foerster led the team with nine shot attempts and four shots on goal, which accounted for nearly a third of the team’s 14 shots.

Tocchet has also changed his forward lines in each of the first four games, which leaves little time to build chemistry. This is something that is showing in the forward groupings. With a short camp and abbreviated preseason, the Flyers need to find some consistency anywhere they can at this point. Last season the Flyers were shot out of a cannon because they had time to play together and found that spark together. So far that spark is not there.

With the franchise investing so much draft capital and trade capital in the offense, this lack of shots and any offensive production is frustrating to say the least. Porter Martone still believes that the roster has what it takes.

“We have the people, we have the skill. It’s just doing it,” Martone said.

The team needs to come together and get back to the fundamentals as soon as possible because they are looking down the barrel of historic futility to start a season. With the high expectations on this team coming in this is not the way that the front office envisioned following up on the Cinderella season last year, and it’s only a matter of time until seats start getting hot.

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