The Flyers were surging, having rung off five straight, heading into this past weekend's back-to-back, but then stumbled. 

The Colorado Avalanche always found a way to stay ahead in a game that Philly could never quite make their way back into on Saturday, then the Orange and Black just let Sunday against old friend Claude Giroux and the Ottawa Senators completely slip away on Sunday. 

They're setbacks, for sure. Not ones that leave the Flyers in a dire position by any means, but with a pivotal stretch coming up leading into the All-Star break, ones they want to bounce back from quick. 

Here are five thoughts on the Flyers' weekend that was, and the week that lies ahead...

Vibe check on the forecheck

Leading into the holiday break, the Flyers had been run into the ground by a hard-nosed, physical Nashville team that outright outworked them, and postgame head coach John Tortorella didn't hesitate to call out what his team had done wrong. 

It was stubbornness that did them in that night, he said. To that point, the Flyers were a team that thrived off creating offense in transition, but that alone wasn't going to get them by. They needed to start forechecking and staying on the puck because that was going to become the game once the season progressed into the second half. Everything was going to be a grind, especially against the teams in the developing playoff hunt with them. 

On Thursday night, the Flyers did a masterful job in constantly hounding the Dallas Stars – so much so that they were still looking for just their second shot of the entire game well into the second period. 

On Saturday against Colorado, they did OK sustaining pressure, but a few bad bounces and slips, plus Nathan MacKinnon finding his openings, always kept them just out of reach of a game they kept trying to climb back into. 

Sunday against the Ottawa, it all completely got away from them. Despite building up a 2-0 lead after the opening frame, the Flyers never truly set up camp in Ottawa's zone, which let the Senators turn the puck around into a number of golden opportunities the other way.

And even though the Sens are a struggling team that got caught in a whirlwind of ownership, coaching, and front-office turnover this season, they still have a ton of skill to make good on those chances. Eventually, they did. 

"You’re going to give up some grade-As against Colorado," Tortorella said of the weekend on the whole following Sunday's 5-3 defeat."The part of the game I’m concerned, here, is just we didn’t make enough plays, we did not establish forechecking. We were just one and done. In the second half of the game, we were just one and done. [The Senators] generated so much momentum off of their goals. Once they scored, they generated momentum. 

"We’ve got to learn – like we score that third goal, we have to play with a two-goal lead for a while. Just for five or six minutes, we can’t get hurt right away. They generated momentum off it, give them credit."

But the concern will have to be addressed quickly with Hart Trophy candidate Nikita Kucherov and an ever-powerful Tampa Bay Lightning team coming up on Tuesday night. 

After ringing off five in a row and then just as quickly dropping two straight, no time is being left for a breather.

"I'm gonna leave them alone tomorrow," Tortorella said. "We get ready to play our next game. It's all you can do. I trust the group."

"It's only two games here," center Sean Couturier said from the locker room postgame. "We've been going one game at a time anyway all year. That's our mindset. It’s not gonna change now. So yeah, it's a tough loss, but we're still alright here. We’ll be ready for Tuesday's game."

Big Z's highs and lows

Sunday was shaping up to be the Egor Zamula breakout game. 

In the first period, with all kinds of traffic in front of the Senators' net, the puck took an odd hop over everyone and into open ice. No one else saw it land but Zamula up by the point, who coasted right to it and threw a shot straight at the open net. 

Easy goal, a Jagr-esque salute and a shrug of the shoulders for flair, and a 1-0 Flyers lead. 

Zamula was on. He was on hat trick watch, and his teammates were trying to get him to it. The Wells Fargo Center crowd wanted it for him, too, yelling "Shoooot!" whenever he touched the puck after. 

But then one error tipped the scales. 

Trying to take a pass up by the point early into the second period, the puck slipped right under the blade of Zamula's stick, and former Flyer now Senator Zac MacEwen was off to the races, winning the chase for the puck and beating Samuel Ersson with the shot to put Ottawa on the board. 

Issues snowballed from there, and Zamula knew it. 

"I had a mistake today on the blue line," he said postgame. "I think this mistake was pretty bad for me, for my team too because Ottawa started playing better after my mistake. Second goal, it’s a greasy goal. They score. It’s the NHL. It’s a game. Sometimes you’ll like it, sometimes you'll not."

It's the way it goes. 

That said, there's been a whole lot to like about Zamula's game of late. 

Of course, there's been the boost he's added to the power play, walking the line with confidence and moving the puck with purpose for a struggling unit that hasn't been struggling nearly as much of late on the man advantage. But he's also been noticeably more active with his stick, breaking up plays and getting in the way of passes to disrupt opponents through the neutral zone away from the puck. 

He's still got a ways to go, but right now Zamula has been playing his best hockey, coinciding with the most of it he's played in the NHL by far, and a quick glance of his stat line makes that clear – five goals, 10 assists (15 points), a plus-10 rating, and 15:47 of average ice time in 38 games played. All are easily career highs save for ice time, but that's because of a bigger sample size. 

Zamula has made it hard for Tortorella to pull him from the lineup, which has led to the Flyers running with 11 forwards and seven defensemen for the past few games. That, however, isn't sustainable long term. 

With Zamula having played his way into a steady role, Jamie Drysdale arriving from Anaheim, and Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Nick Seeler, and Sean Walker locking up the four remaining blueline spots – with Marc Staal having sat idle for a while now – there's a clear logjam on defense. And with the March 8 trade deadline, looming, it's reasonable to presume that something's gotta give here.

There just aren't enough minutes to go around, and as this weekend showed, choosing to play a forward short can also come back to bite you. 

The latest on Tippett

Owen Tippett was on a goal-scoring tear but got banged up in Saturday's loss to Colorado during the third period and went up the tunnel limping. He didn't return. 

He didn't play the next day against Ottawa either, but NBC Sports Philadelphia's Jordan Hall did catch him trying to skate with head trainer Tommy Alva watching a couple hours prior. 

Losing Tippett for any amount of time, especially with the way he's played in the past week, is a definite blow to the Flyers' offensive power, but that he can still skate and that there are only three games left until the All-Star break perhaps puts things in the best-case scenario for a recovery timeline.

About the goaltenders

Carter Hart started Saturday's game against Colorado, but by the time the second period had ended, he was looking at five goals allowed on 15 shots faced – though granted, four of those were off an odd bounce, a (debatable) kick, or plays that left him in a position where there just wasn't much he could do (MacKinnon will do that to you).

Still, he was benched in the third for Ersson, despite the Flyers facing a back-to-back, and with a damning explanation from Tortorella afterward. 

"I felt we were in the game," he said. "That’s why I switched the goalie."

Since Hart returned from lingering issues with an illness in late December, he and Ersson have split the starts in goal, but with how stellar Ersson has played from around mid-November onward, there's a clearly stated trust in the backup goaltender right now. 

With all due credit, Hart hasn't been bad either – the Flyers are still winning with him in – but he has been known to let a couple of leaks by and, look, Saturday was a clunker no matter how you put it. 

We're still not at any sort of goalie controversy. I don't think it really can be looked at that way. You need two goalies to survive into today's NHL, so the Flyers have to hope here that Hart rebounds quickly and settles into a steady run going forward. 

The big week ahead

We're at January 22 and the All-Star break approaching. The Flyers did drop their back-to-back this past weekend, but that followed a five-game win streak and a 6-3-1 stretch in their last 10. 

They have 56 points through 47 games and are still right behind the first-place Rangers (60 points through 46 games) in the Metro Division race. 

MoneyPuck has the Flyers with a 75.3 percent chance of making the playoffs. Hockey-Reference has them with a 77.8 percent shot. 

Tortorella has always said that you don't know the team you really have until the end of January, but we're getting close, and the Flyers are still up there. However, Tampa Bay, a force in the Eastern Conference for years, is up on Tuesday night. Detroit, fighting to break through into playoff contention is next on the road Thursday night. Then on Saturday is powerhouse Boston before the league breaks for the All-Star Weekend. 

The Flyers have played some solid hockey, beaten some great teams, and have surprised tons of people in the process. 

At every turn, they've continually proven many wrong over what this rebuilding team is capable of, but it's hard to feel like this stretch coming won't be the one that shows what they're truly made of. 

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