It’s somehow getting worse for the Flyers, who saw their losing streak extend to 11 games in a dreadful 6-3 loss to the lowly Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.
Philadelphia hasn’t won a game in over three weeks, going 0-8-3 since their last triumph on Dec. 29. They’ve plummeted down the standings and now sit in last place in the Metropolitan Division.
Now, a loss to a Sabres team that had lost its previous nine games at home and won just two of its last 11 games; they skated circles around the Flyers. After Philadelphia took a 2-1 lead, the Sabres netted five unanswered goals before a Claude Giroux consolation prize late in the third period — his second goal of the game.
“Lose 10 in a row, you come into Buffalo and you lay a goose egg, it’s embarrassing,” forward Scott Laughton said. “It’s tough right now. We need to find a way, and the only guys who are going to get us out of it are the players.
“We’ve got to come to work tomorrow, have a good practice and be ready. There’s not much else to say. We’ve got to get ourselves out of this. It’s not acceptable at this level.”
This has already been a trying season for a Flyers team that had already fired its head coach in Alain Vigneault. Interim boss Mike Yeo started off promisingly enough, winning five of his first seven games before things went horrifically south.
“This is what we’re juggling right now,” Yeo said while trying to explain how the Flyers can get out of this funk. “There’s a fine line between making sure you don’t crush confidence that isn’t there but at the same time, we can’t accept anything less than good performances right now. We have guys out of the lineup. We need players to perform. That’s not talking about young players or old players. That’s people that are wearing the Flyers jerseys. We need them to go out and perform because if we don’t have everybody going, then we’re putting ourselves in a tough position.”
The Flyers host a Dallas Stars team on Monday that has won two straight games before completing the second leg of a back-to-back on Tuesday night at UBS Arena against a New York Islanders team that has won nine of its last 14 games.
“I think we’re all in this together,” Giroux said. “Right now, it feels like we’re hitting rock bottom and it just feels like we can’t catch a break. We do a lot of good things out there, but when something bad happens, it’s really bad.”
