January 29, 2026
The Flyers left the ice Wednesday night in Columbus the same way they've had for the better part of the month.
Opportunity and valuable points in the standings were left on the table, along with way too many shooters left unmarked.
They lost to the Blue Jackets, 5-3, in their second straight defeat and their ninth in the last 11 games dating back to Jan. 8.
A Travis Konecny hat trick couldn't save them, nor could miraculous goaltending from Dan Vladar in his return from injury.
They've been too much of a mess and too listless everywhere else to afford themselves that kind of a break.
And they're only sliding faster, with the list of problems only growing greater.
First and foremost, the Flyers' defensive structure has fallen to pieces of late.
Coming into the season, first-year head coach Rick Tocchet stressed a priority on making sure backdoor passing options were covered up, which would force shots to only come from one direction and leave the Flyers' goalies only having to worry about one half of the ice.
They were good at it out of the gate. Travis Sanheim continued as the leading defenseman whose sound play was gaining increased international notoriety for Team Canada at the Olympics, while Cam York and Jamie Drysdale skated with noticeable improvements in the way they closed off gaps and cut off chances.
Opposing shot counts were kept low; Vladar, as the emerging No. 1 goalie, was stopping enough of them; and the Flyers, though they weren't generating much shot volume themselves, played controlled and responsible enough overall to be one of the harder teams in the NHL to crack.
But ever since the halfway mark of the season, Flyers skaters have been watching and drifting toward the puck more, and getting punished for it as they fail to register what's happening behind them.
The Blue Jackets caught them a few times with cross-ice passes to wide-open looks on Wednesday night. Vladar sprawled across his crease to save a couple of them for the highlight reel, but couldn't get to Kirill Marchenko's shot in the first period or Sean Monahan's go-ahead goal late in the third.
No goalie, really, can be expected to hold the line when there's often one guy left in front of the net all alone.
"You cannot let that weak-side goal go in," Tocchet said postgame. "Let Vladdy have a strong-side shot, he stops that all day long. But that one [from the weak side] is impossible for him to stop."
And only sets the Flyers further back, because they're not exactly reliable for a scoring onslaught right now either.
Their power play is still miserable, the worst in the entire league at a 15.1 percent conversion rate as of Thursday, and after going 0-for-5 on the man advantage against Columbus.
Trevor Zegras has cooled off, having not scored in the past five games. Owen Tippett had his hat trick in what could've been a major reset of a win over the league-best Avalanche last Friday, but he's a notoriously streaky scorer, and the Flyers couldn't hold on to that momentum leaving Colorado.
Konecny had his hat trick on Wednesday night, but just as much has had his hand in the Flyers' January struggles through a series of ill-timed fumbles with the puck, and also took a hard-looking shot off the foot against Columbus that has his immediate health status questionable.
Meanwhile, Noah Cates hasn't scored since Dec. 30, captain Sean Couturier not since Dec. 7, and at this point, Matvei Michkov, as the organization's core young wing piece, just needs to fight through a brutal sophomore slump the rest of the way. He had a couple of looks Wednesday night, but couldn't bury them, then lost track of Monahan drifting down toward the Flyers' net late for what ended up as Columbus' winning goal. Michkov is still highly important to the Flyers, but this season is what it is for him now.
The Flyers are really missing Tyson Foerster and what was his breakout season more than ever now, too. But unless they make a deep playoff run, they probably aren't getting him back from his injury for the rest of the year.
And what the rest of this year is for the Flyers gets tricky now.
The organization's goal this season was to see the team take a tangible step forward in their on-ice results, and after that cathartic thrashing of Cutter Gauthier and the Anaheim Ducks back on Jan. 6, that step was looking like it could actually be into the playoffs.
The Flyers were holding the No. 3 seed in the Metropolitan Division, following arguably their most dominant effort yet against Anaheim and all in front of a packed Xfinity Mobile Arena that was fully ready to get behind them.
Matvei Michkov has to finish a lost season for him, numbers-wise, strong.
They had a clear path, too. The typical Eastern Conference postseason contenders of the past several years or so in the Rangers, Devils, Bruins, Maple Leafs, and Capitals were all on either shaky ground or outright sinking. The Flyers, through the middle of the month, had a pivotal stretch approaching against all opponents in that playoff picture, where if they even went just around .500 during it, they would still come out of it in solid shape moving straight into a road trip out West.
But then they went and sunk themselves with a six-game losing streak, a full-on meltdown in Utah after leading 3-0 at one point, and then a couple more deflating losses this week that were only broken up by outlier wins against Vegas and Colorado.
They're not completely cooked yet, but they are on the outside looking in of the Eastern Conference playoff race with 57 points in the standings and a minus-10 overall goal differential.
The Flyers trail the Bruins, who they'll face later Thursday in Boston for the second game of a back-to-back, by eight points for the second Wild Card spot in the East. In the Metro, the New York Islanders are holding third now over the Flyers with a six-point lead.
It's a really steep climb to make up, now that the Olympic break will take up most of February. It's a climb, too, that the Flyers could've easily spared themselves, but just didn't.
Instead, they left all that opportunity on the table, and all those shooters sneaking behind them left unmarked.
They're paying for it now, and have the Bruins Thursday night and only three more games after until the break to show any signs that they can turn this around.
The chances of it right now, though, aren't looking great.
"We shot ourselves in the foot a few times, and they capitalized on them," Sanheim said of what went wrong in Columbus on Wednesday night. "We're just not executing the way that we need to at this level. It cost us."
Against the Blue Jackets, going back most of this month, and unless there's a surge down the stretch, quite possibly for a season that was supposed to be a step forward.
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