Photo Credit: Zack Hill
The Flyers are free falling once again, and have lost four straight games. Whether it’s injuries or Covid related issues, the team just isn’t showing much life or fight. Yes, the Flyers were faced with massive hurdles or obstacles to overcome last night in a 6-2 beat down to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The team did not show life at times, and it felt as though they accepted their fate (Loss) especially in the first period. When things start to go south, they look very lethargic and lost.
For all intents and purposes, even last week the Flyers won a game they were outplayed in against the Seattle Kraken. The Kraken had trouble finishing the play, and that’s how the Flyers trumped them eventually in overtime en route to a 3-2 Flyers victory.
Mike Yeo sort of called the team out following the game last night, and he had, and he had every right to do so. It wasn’t just about last night’s loss, it was how they’ve been playing as of late even when they were winning games following the ten game losing streak.
“Probably will take some time to think about it a little bit more before we address it entirely, to be honest with you,” Yeo said following the game. “Said a lot during the game. What the message is probably going to be is… in all honesty, we were missing some guys. How do you compensate for that? Well, you up your compete level. You dig in harder into your team game, and obviously you have to show more resilience, heart, whatever you want to say. You look at tonight and I thought we had an okay start. Then, next thing you know they score a goal. It was just after that whether or not we believe we could win, or whatever the case was. We were not good enough. So for me, the biggest message was, more than anything, we can talk about x’s and o’s and game plans and everything else. It’s just about how hard you fight. We can look at where we are at in the season, and we can just sort of accept our fate for the rest of our way and just say it’s not our year, bad luck, this and that.”
Yeo continued, “You can do the same in the game. You can fight and determine your own fate… regardless of what the circumstances are. There’s gonna be times where maybe you don’t get the result you’re looking for. You’re gonna go down swinging if that’s the case and I think we did that tonight and I think that’s the biggest thing we have to address.”
That’s exactly one of the biggest flaws with this team right now, and it is very reminiscent of last season. This team has lost their will to battle and fight when the wheels start falling off the bus. At times it appears they have accepted their fate of a loss, A La last night against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
“There’s an element of toughness on the ice,” Yeo said. “You battle your courage and you show up and you compete and you battle and you play physical. But there’s another form of toughness and that’s mental toughness and that’s not feeling sorry for yourself but getting frustration getting the best of you. Individual games like this, we need to find a way to push harder and not let one goal turn into two and two turn into three. We have to show more fight in that situation and we’re going to have a great opportunity to do that going forward.”
Good for Mike Yeo to try to nip this in the butt now, and he got some help from Cam Atkinson as well following the game:
“We’re definitely not going to make any excuses. These opportunities only come around so often so guys had to embrace it, relish it, and take it and run with it. There’s more ice time for me so i’m trying to do the best i can to help this team win in any way I can and I think guys have to look in the mirror and find a way to dig deeper and have a little bit more fight in their game.” – Cam Atkinson
Not many people expected the Flyers to win last night, but they can go down with a fight, be resilient, step up to the challenge. The Flyers did none of that for at least two periods of hockey last night (Asides from the second period). It appeared they accepted their fate, and we’re cooked before the game began. This has to change, and it has to change fast.
