March 16, 2026
Kyle Ross/Imagn Images
Jamie Drysdale and the Flyers' power play have to start making opponents pay.
Jamie Drysdale stood at the back of the locker room, in front of the cluster of cameras and recorders, knowing exactly what left the Flyers hanging.
They had just lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets, 2-1, after the shootout Saturday at their home Xfinity Mobile Arena. They still walked away with the overtime point in the standings, but facing a climb up in the late-season playoff hunt, and up against a Columbus team that's ahead of them on that ladder, they really needed the full two.
And yet the Flyers cost themselves just as much as the Blue Jackets beat them. Drysdale knew it. The whole team had to along with him.
They put themselves behind, again, when Kirill Marchenko put the first goal away for Columbus in the midst of chaos in front of the Philadelphia net.
And they came up empty on the power play, again, going 0-for-4 with a man advantage, which included a four-minute run on it after the Blue Jackets' Damon Severson got called for cross-checking twice at the end of the second period for chopping Denver Barkey down behind the net.
It's the kind of "gimme" a team has to make its opponent pay for if it's truly ready to be in the playoffs. But the Flyers couldn't, and it cost them, just as much as putting themselves in an early deficit again did, too.
And Drysdale knew it.
"I think it's just a matter of execution, to be honest with you," the defenseman, who also ran point on the Flyers' first power play unit, said postgame. "We're however many games in. We know what we should be doing, and we just gotta execute it better. That's the bottom line. We should've won our team this game tonight. That's the bottom line."
Now it's part of this reality: If the Flyers are going to make a late-season push for one of the last playoff spots, with the 16 games they have left as of Monday, it's going to be just as much about overcoming their season-long weaknesses as it is the teams still keeping ahead of them in the Eastern Conference race.
With Saturday's shootout loss to Columbus, the Flyers now trail the Detroit Red Wings and the Boston Bruins for either of the two Wild Card spots by six points. Detroit and Boston each have 80 as of Monday morning, Columbus is next in line with 79, then the Ottawa Senators at 77, followed by the Flyers and Washington Capitals at 74 each.
Saturday could've been a potentially massive four-point swing game had the Flyers won it in regulation, gaining two points' worth of ground on the Blue Jackets in the standings while they would've been held still.
Instead, Columbus kept progressing while the Flyers took just a marginal step, all with time only starting to run shorter.
A three-game road trip out West to play Anaheim, Los Angeles, and then San Jose is on deck for this week, beginning Wednesday night. After that, the Flyers will come back home to Philly with another likely crucial shot against Columbus on March 24, along with other pivotal games left down the stretch against Detroit (three of them), the Islanders on the road (third in the Metro division with 81 points), the Capitals in D.C. (March 31), and the Bruins at home (on April 5).
It's a lot to manage, and the odds only got slimmer. MoneyPuck has the Flyers with just a 5.4 percent chance to make the playoffs as of Monday morning. But it is still, ultimately a shot.
"I think every guy in the room is one check-minded still on getting in," Drysdale continued after Saturday's loss. "There's no 'if's, 'and's, or 'but's. Was this an important game to get two points? Absolutely. In saying that, I think we're not out 'til we're out. I think that this team can kinda build off that. That's kinda our attitude, and I know for a fact that that's how everybody in the room feels. So [we] need a good road trip ahead of us and go from there."
But part of that now is just as much about overcoming themselves as the teams ahead of them.
The Flyers' power play has gone 2-for-21 through the month of March so far, and for the season, carries a 15.2-percent success rate that sits at dead last in the NHL.
They've also surrendered the first goal in six of their seven games this month, and in 45 of their 66 total games completed.
The Flyers do have 18 wins in those games when they trail first, which are the most in the NHL, but with an 18-19-8 record across them. When they score first, they're 13-4-4.
So they have to start getting ahead, and when opponents give them a chance on the power play, they have to find a way to punish them for it.
It's what playoff teams do. Drysdale knows it. The whole team does.
"No one wants to start off behind," he said. "We've done a good job battling back, but obviously, we'd like to start ahead and come out of the gates swinging. I think it's something we try and do, [that we] look to do, and in saying that, I guess [we do] battle back, tie it up, and took it to a shootout...Again, I think power play, we gotta win that game."
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