March 12, 2025
Kirby Lee/Imagn Images
The Lake Tahoe game feels like some sort of bizarre fever dream looking back on it.
The Flyers have been trapped in a pit of mediocrity for about a decade now, but with levels to that hole of what used to feel like complete despair at times.
From multiple double-digit losing streaks, to lame duck coaches, disastrous GM failings, an ever-spinning goalie carousel, and rosters flushed trivia answers, the Flyers have iced some brutal lineups over the past 10 years.
Here's a look back on a few that really stuck out, following this past week's spotlight on the Phillies' and then the Eagles' worst:
Forwards: Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, Nick Cousins, Sean Couturier, Val Filppula, Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, Brayden Schenn, Wayne Simmonds, Mike Vecchione, Jakub Voracek, Jordan Weal, Dale Weise.
Defensemen: Michael Del Zotto, Shayne Gostisbehere, Robert Hägg, Andrew MacDonald, Ivan Provorov, Nick Schultz.
Goaltender: Anthony Stolarz.
A year after overachieving and rallying their way into the playoffs under rookie coach Dave Hakstol, the Flyers crashed back down to earth with a middling season, an inconsistent and shallow roster, and the ever-persistent franchise curse of unstable goaltending.
They wrapped the season at home with a shootout loss to Carolina, and took the first signs of Hakstol's glaring inefficiencies as a coach into the summer, along with a down year from Claude Giroux that raised concerns of a decline, and then, as fans would come to learn, former GM Ron Hextall's baffling commitment to Jordan Weal as a regular NHLer.
Forwards: Sean Couturier, Claude Giroux, Ryan Hartman, Corban Knight, Travis Konecny, Scott Laughton, Oskar Lindblom, Michael Raffl, James van Riemsdyk, Phil Varone, Jake Voracek.
Defensemen: Mark Friedman, Shayne Gostisbehere, Radko Gudas, Robert Hägg, Samuel Morin, Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim.
Goaltender: Carter Hart.
The 2018-19 season went up in flames. The organization had enough of Hextall and fired him, and after Chuck Fletcher was brought in to replace him, Hakstol was shown the door not long after, with then Phantoms coach Scott Gordon taking over behind the bench in the interim.
Giroux couldn't carry them on that same Hart Trophy-caliber pace he tapped into the year before, Shayne Gostisbehere was banged up and directionless, Wayne Simmonds became the trade deadline casualty, and oh, the Flyers blew through eight goaltenders with this season.
It was brutal. They closed out with five straight losses to end the year, including another Game 82 to loss to Carolina to finally send them home, and were outscored at a clip of 25-10 during that last stretch.
Even worse, it felt like the team wasn't left anywhere substantial after several years of Hextall pleading patience while he tried to wait for his prospects to solve all of the Flyers' problems – coupled with an overly conservative approach to the free-agent market, and seemingly, all the wrong decisions when he did actually take action.
Forwards: Andy Andreoff, Nicolas Aubé-Kubel, Connor Bunnaman, Sean Couturier, Joel Farabee, Kevin Hayes, Nolan Patrick, Michael Raffl, Maksim Sushko, James van Riemsdyk.
Defensemen: Mark Friedman, Shayne Gostisbehere, Erik Gustafsson, Robert Hägg, Samuel Morin, Phil Myers, Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim.
Goaltenders: Carter Hart, Brian Elliott.
This wasn't even the Flyers' worst loss of the 2021 season. They got embarrassed by the Rangers 9-0 a few weeks later, but this game and this lineup sticks out the most because the team got slammed with positive COVID cases, basically had to ice an AHL roster because of it, and flew them all the way out to Lake Tahoe – in a pandemic – just to get crushed by the Bruins.
The team that was finally ready to compete and, even after the pause, pushed the Islanders all the way to Game 7 in the Toronto bubble, they were gone.
What replaced them was a completely spent and directionless group that pretty clearly checked out on former coach Alain Vigneault.
It was a disaster.
Forwards: Cam Atkinson, Connor Bunnaman, Morgan Frost, Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, Scott Laughton, Oskar Lindblom, Zack MacEwen, Gerry Mayhew, Linus Sandin, James van Riemsdyk, Max Willman.
Defensemen: Justin Braun, Ivan Provorov, Rasmus Ristolainen, Keith Yandle, Travis Sanheim, Cam York.
Goaltender: Martin Jones.
A 10-game losing streak (technically, winless streak) wasn't enough for the Flyers in the 2021-22 season. They upped the ante and spiraled into a 13-game collapse a few weeks later, icing the lineup above for that franchise record-setting 13th loss.
Giroux was at a loss, maybe the most dejected he had ever been in his career, and was rapidly approaching the end of his run in Philadelphia.
Vingeault was fired, Mike Yeo was tasked with just getting the team to the finish line, but then there were no quick fixes for what to do with the Flyers once there.
Ivan Provorov's trajectory went backwards with Matt Niskanen's retirement and he never recovered. Ryan Ellis couldn't stay on the ice to help him try to course correct, and he proceeded to skate like he was the only Flyer out there up until he was finally traded away.
Keith Yandle looked like he was in a race to rack up the worst plus/minus rating anyone had ever seen, Rasmus Ristolainen at the time was a defensive mess and seen as a massive overspend coming over from the trade with Buffalo, and the rest of the roster, just...remember when Gerry Mayhew was hot for like a handful of games there?
The Flyers were awful in this season and, in many ways, are still recovering from it.
Forwards: Kieffer Bellows, Patrick Brown, Noah Cates, Nic Deslauriers, Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost, Kevin Hayes, Tanner Laczynski, Zack MacEwen, Lukáš Sedlák, Owen Tippett, Max Willman.
Defensemen: Justin Braun, Tony DeAngelo, Ivan Provorov, Rasmus Ristolainen, Travis Sanheim, Nick Seeler.
Goaltender: Felix Sandström.
Current coach John Tortorella was brought in to help start fixing the problems, but the Flyers were still really bad.
They lost 10 straight games again, again dropping that last one to the Islanders to hit double digits with the streak.
They didn't have Giroux anymore. Chuck Fletcher really didn't want to say the word "rebuild" – it took him getting fired and Danny Brière taking over for that word to finally be uttered – and you had one more year of Provorov, plus Tony DeAngelo, not playing defense.
They were both gone after this season was done.
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