The Flyers skated hard all night, but were ultimately climbing too steep uphill.

Porter Martone was everywhere in his home debut at Xfinity Mobile Arena, so was Tyson Foerster, who scored in his return to the lineup from injury, and Sam Ersson made some huge saves, but just couldn't make the ones that hurt the most, while the Flyers on the whole couldn't make those extra shots that found their way through.

They lost, 4-2, to the Detroit Red Wings in front of a South Philly crowd that was ready to go off for them all night, and in a matchup that carried a vital two points in the final push of the Eastern Conference playoff race.

You can argue that the Flyers were the better team. Their tempo and their shot volume, as they outshot the Red Wings 34-19, says as much. 

But Alex DeBrincat, Patrick Kane, Lucas Raymond, and a now very unpopular officiating crew led by Cody Beach say otherwise.

The Flyers are 37-26-12 now. They're still sitting at 86 points, while Detroit, and Ottawa with a win over Buffalo, pulled ahead with 88. 

Columbus, also with 88 points, lost to Carolina, while the New York Islanders at third in the Metropolitan Division with 89 points, were off for the night to both stay where they are in the hunt.

The Flyers have seven games left now, starting with the Isles on the road Friday night to complete a back-to-back. They're still in it, but they're going to have to be near perfect to have a chance.

"Every game's a must-win at this point," winger Travis Konecny said afterward.

The pressure is on, and time is short.

The Flyers came out with energy, the home crowd showed up ready to feed it back to them, and fittingly, their two late additions were leading the charge. 

Foerster, in his return to the lineup, easily got the loudest pop out of introductions, and once the puck dropped, he immediately went back to work along the wall and in the corners like he never had a several-month layoff from injury, and was looking out for those open shots.

And Martone, playing on the South Philly ice for the first time as an NHLer, he was everywhere.

The 19-year-old made camp in front of the Detroit net right away, to the annoyance of goaltender John Gibson, who knocked him down early on with a blocker to the back. But Martone got up and kept skating anyway, recovering pucks behind the net and in the corners, and wheeling them back out to the front to generate a flurry of chances. 

Martone almost connected with his linemate, Konency, for the tap-in on a puck sent with some heat to the low far-side post. It just missed the mark. Then later on, with the puck in back in the offensive zone, Martone tried to keep it himself and sneak a couple of shots by Gibson to the short side, but the Detroit goaltender had the near post all sealed up. If anything, though, it kept Gibson alert that Martone would be ready to shoot from anywhere.

Then there was a sequence late in the first that was all the big-name rookie. 

Martone got his stick in front of a Detroit point shot that dampened the puck's trajectory and rolled it straight to Travis Sahneim in front of the Philadelphia crease. Sanheim tossed it back up to Martone at the blue line, and in one quick motion, the winger deflected it right to Konecny sprinting through the neutral zone with speed. 

The touch pass sprung Konecny and Christian Dvorak into a 2-on-1, which they couldn't convert on, but largely kept the Flyers skating downhill.

The refs unfortunately, had other plans. 

During a scrum in front of the net following a Sam Ersson freeze of the puck, Martone stepped to throw a shove, but ended up getting tagged for a cross check. 

In between, Detroit had a couple of questionable hits and sweeps of the sticks go without the bat of an eye, but captain Sean Couturier, who skated like a bulldozer after opposing puck carriers Thursday night, got an arm up for tripping from Dylan Larkin falling over him as he was getting up late in the first.

Couturier was upset after the whistle, head coach Rick Tocchet on the bench was livid, and Alex DeBrincat, quickly into the Red Wings power play, scored to give the Red Wings a 1-0 lead. 

Tocchet only had more animated words to throw at the officials after that, and "REF YOU SUCK" chants followed them off the ice from fans as the last few seconds ticked down.

"I didn't agree with the first 30-35 minutes at all," Tocchet said of the game's officiating.

Foerster evened it quickly coming back out for the second, though. 

Owen Tippett flubbed a slap shot from the right faceoff circle, but the error slipped the puck into the slot, where Foerster was standing in the right place, at the right time. 

Foerster made a quick handle and wired a snap shot past Gibson. The horn went off, the crowd roared, and Foerster pumped his gloved fist as his teammates quickly surrounded him in celebration. 

There was no better welcome back, and it sparked the Flyers to keep skating downhill in a period where they dominated the play, but just couldn't find a way ahead.

Ersson made a series of great saves through the first and second periods, including on a 2-on-1 break that had Alex DeBrincat skating straight to him off a Rasmus Ristolainen turnover. DeBrincat loaded up to shoot, but Ersson squared up to him, cut down the angle, and snared the puck away with his glove.

Play flew by nonstop, and calls were nonexistent through the second period. And yet the refs still made themselves characters throughout, stepping in between stoppages and post-whistles scrums, especially when Martone seemed to be on the ice, with  Beach as the lead official even going as far as to grab Martone by the back of his jersey at one point after a tangle that drew the puck offsides as the Flyers were trying to move toward the Detroit net.

No one in a striped shirt made any new friends in South Philly on Thursday night.

And the Flyers went into the third facing no easier of a climb.

Before the second ended, a fluky hop of the skate went off of J.T. Compher's skate in front of the Flyers' net and right to Lucas Raymond wide. Ersson couldn't stretch over to in time, and Raymond shot into a wide open net to put the Red Wings back up, 2-1.

The start of the final frame, finally, brought on a Detroit penalty via a Raymond hook of Cam York. 

The crowd gave a cathartic, and a bit of a sarcastic, cheer. The Flyers finally had a power play, and they cycled the puck around and pushed it forward, but couldn't get it through.

But even after the clock expired on the man advantage, they kept pressing, Martone especially, who fired a shot on from the hashmarks not long after, but into Gibson's pads.

By the midway point of the third, the Flyers were outshooting the Red Wings 12-1 for the period, and 31-16 for the game. You couldn't say the pressure wasn't there.

Detroit just caught a break and made it count, two of them actually.

The Red Wings flipped the puck out to center ice to clear it out of their zone, and as it fell, Patrick Kane, who also isn't one with many fans in Philadelphia, skated through and recovered it with a step ahead to break for another 2-on-1.

He stared down Ersson, picked his spot, and scored to make it 3-1.

The Flyers came back up the ice, Martone threw a puck on, Konecny crashed the net, but got thrown down by a Detroit defender as the it sailed by Gibson and he followed crashing into the goaltender. 

The refs, initially, waved it off. Tocchet, after more words tossed their way, demanded a challenge. The review didn't take long and a Philadelphia goal was put on the board, 3-2. 

On the next faceoff, the Red Wings skated back down Philadelphia's way. The puck took an odd rebound to DeBrincat along the goal line, and an even odder bounce when he shot it off Ristolainen in front of him to take a hop over Ersson's shoulder. The Flyers were back down two, and at that point, it was just a killer.

They couldn't make their way back from that.

"We got a big game tomorrow, so just keep pushing," Konecny said. "It's frustrating. I don't really know what to say right now about this game, but we gave our all, the crowd was right there into it, and we gave it our best shot. Just didn't get it done."

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