The Flyers have started 0-2-2. That's not the hot start we were hoping for. After an offseason of hope and excitement, it's already come down to this. To be fair, part of it is just the "Philly Doom and Gloom" feelings we have had. After all, it's been a rough week. The Phillies were humiliated out of the playoffs...again. The Eagles lost two games, badly, in six days. The Flyers were embarrassed on opening night and haven't rebounded much since.
The Flyers have looked like a dumpster fire. They have scored a total of five goals. That's good for 25th in the league, but the Flyers have already played four games. Several teams below them have played two or three. As a whole, the Flyers have 13 points. Connor McDavid has nine. Ouch.
So, it is easy to get down on the team now. They look lost. They aren't scoring. They aren't playing well defensively. This season is done. Or is it?
Why the Flyers will turn it around
For most of my life, the Flyers seem to sputter out of the gate slowly and stink until Halloween. Then they seem to kick it into gear. This is a historically bad start, and if Bobby Clarke were still the GM, Rick Tocchet would be gone now. Remember in 2006, he fired Ken Hitchcock after just eight games into the season, and in 2000, Craig Ramsay lasted just 28 days as head coach.
However, Tocchet is safe. He has the respect of the coaches and the Flyers admin. Things will settle down. One of the reasons I believe this is that he is slowly tinkering with the lines. He's trying to let the players get used to playing with each other and build chemistry. If it doesn't work, he'll juggle. But he's not making drastic changes.
Secondly, this team isn't just laying down. Yes, they are making mistakes, but they are not getting lucky. And if baseball is a game of inches and football a game of yards, hockey is a game of millimeters. How many shots have been ringing off a post so far? That's less than a fraction of an inch this way, or that, and it's a goal.
You saw this in the first game with Tyson Foerster. He had a series with two excellent shots on goal versus the Penguins. That's not someone who's given up or not playing well. That's someone who's hustling. And given time, that hustle will pay off in goals. And as Foerster heats up, so will Noah Cates, Porter Martone, and/or whoever else he is paired up with.
The problem is that when a problem sticks with a team for a while, the team gets antsy. They begin "trying too hard". Players rush shots that won't go in. Passes get rushed to jump-start a play that results in a turnover instead. That leads to goals and losses.
The veterans need to calm the locker room down. There are 80 games left. There is plenty of time to turn this season around. This team has too much talent to continue like this all season, unless we've totally misjudged and miscalculated the talent levels of just about everyone on this team.
The Flyers will figure it out. Most are younger players, and they need this experience. They need to learn that they can bounce back, and it will be okay. Once they figure it out, everything is going to be just fine. Come the mid-season mark, we'll be laughing at how nervous we were to start this season.
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