What are Flyers’ fans thankful for?

It’s just after Thanksgiving Day and the big question I have for Flyers’ fans is what are you thankful for so far this season? I guess that things could be worse for the Flyers and well, they’ve won some games.  The bad news is that the Flyers are on an eight game losing streak and things don’t look much better in the short term for this team.

With injuries to key players mounting up and a brutal upcoming schedule, the Flyers may be chasing their dubious 13 game franchise-record losing streak from last year.

The Flyers can’t even beat other weak teams.

While the Flyers aren’t at the absolute bottom of the Metropolitan Division, they’re starting to test out the basement stairs and could find themselves at the proverbial bottom of the barrel really soon.  Losing to teams that are even worse than yourselves certainly isn’t a way to dig your way out of a losing streak hole but the Flyers found a way yet again to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with a 3-2 overtime loss to the Washington Capitals.

Truth be told, the Caps are having a streak of tough luck as well with injuries mounting up but their big losses with Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie seem to be coming to an end. The Flyers, on the other hand, have lost their ace in the hole with an upper-body injury (please tell us what type of injury it really is, please?) to Travis Konecny.  The loss of Konecny means that about 40% of your goal-scoring just flew out the window for an indefinite amount of time-possibly until just before Christmas.

Again, the Caps found a way to pull Wednesday night’s game out with yet another game-winning goal from Grandfather Frost in the form of Alex Ovechkin. As I mentioned, the Capitals have their own issues since Ovechkin is the leading scorer for the Caps but last night his magic seemed to just keep going.

The Flyers did have some success with the penalty kill and were two for three on this part of special teams. However, the Flyers’ power play units look more like overcooked turkeys lately and with a 2 for 27 power play ratio (7.4%) in the last nine games, the man advantage seems to be little more than a Black Friday doorbuster gift to the Flyers’ opponents.

Against the Caps, the man advantage fell totally flat with a zero for four average with two power plays in the third period producing exactly zero shots on goal.  Folks, you can’t win games if you can’t shoot goals – especially with a man advantage.  Felix Sandstrom did what he could protecting the pipes and saved 29 out of 32 shots on goal but those three misses helped cause the Flyers  to go 0-5-3 in the last eight games.  Ouch.

And now for some even worse news.

As though things couldn’t get any worse for the Flyers, their upcoming schedule includes the Penguins, Islanders, Lightning, Devils and Avalanche. If head coach John Tortorella was looking for any breathing room for this team, forget about the next string of games.

The stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas will be gut-check time for the Flyers and determine whether they’re heading north or south in the Metro Division standings. The organization, from the front office to the Zamboni drivers, better find a way to get on Santa’s nice list fast or the next 60 plus games could be very painful for coaches, players and fans alike.