Oct 16, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet behind the bench against the Winnipeg Jets at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images
PHILADELPHIA -- In their first game back home after a very successful week-long road trip, the Flyers not only laid an egg against their fiercest rival, they also had the egg cracked open and the yolk splattered all across the ice.
There's no other way to describe their 5-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in front of a crowd ready for something a lot more competitive and with a heaping helping of animosity.
Instead, the Flyers looked completely outclassed. They collectively played their worst game of the season in so many phases. Their most reliable players and units were bad. Dan Vladar, clearly their MVP to start the season, was way off his game, letting up juicy rebounds and having pucks squeeze through him that he's been stopping all season.
The penalty kill, which had statistically been one of the best in the NHL before last night, allowed three goals, seemingly completely lacking structure.
The compete level was very low energy. Yes, it was their fifth game in eight nights, but the Flyers don't like making excuses. Being tired was not going to be one they trotted out after getting their doors blown off.
And on top of it all, the guy who scored their only goal in the game - Tyson Foerster, their leading goal scorer for the season - left the game midway through the second period when he seemed to hurt his shoulder on a shot attempt:
Tyson Foerster just got hurt taking a one timer and man it does not look good. Hope for the best 🙏#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/Tlr087Ydck
Foerster wound up for a slapper and then immediately after the shot, dropped his stick, clutched his right shoulder, skated off the ice in obvious pain, and never returned.
The Flyers didn't have an update on is injury postgame, simply calling it an upper body injury, and while they are likely going to need imaging done on Tuesday to determine what exactly the injury is and the severity of it, it certainly didn't look good.
"He's been playing great all year, hopefully he's all right," captain Sean Couturier said of his injured teammate, before saying the injury - which occurred when the game was tied 1-1, also zapped the Flyers of whatever fuel they had left.
"It definitely played with our lineup after that," Couturier said, lamenting the need to juggle the lines around to cover for Foerster's absence with only 11 forwards. "But it's next man up. Everyone's got to step up and tonight we just didn't have it."
Alternate captain Travis Konecny echoed the sentiments about not having it, but felt that he could notice it even before the Foerster injury.
"It's usually hard, I don't know why, but you go on a big road trip, and when you come home for that first game usually it just seems like (either) you might get away with winning one, or it might be a game like tonight," Konecny said. "It seems to always be something."
It's not something coach Rick Tocchet will settle for as an explanation, which explains why he was in a bit of a sour mood after the game.
Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet met with the media following tonight's 5-1 loss to the Penguins. #PITvsPHI pic.twitter.com/R3RQ3IAck2
"You can tell in the morning," Tocchet said. "But you got to win tired, though. A lot of teams play five-in-eight. ... I understand guys are tired, but that's where you really got to dig in.. Stick to the gameplan. Sometimes a neutral shift is OK. ... I don't know, they just weren't in it tonight. That's really it.
"It's a learning lesson. I'm giving them the day off (Tuesday). Hopefully they can reset. This road trip - we had a pretty good run ... we just can't re-read our press clippings too. I think we got a little too comfortable. We got a little too cute. I think we got to be careful."
Some of those positive press clippings have been right in this space. And the Flyers deserved them. They have been playing better than many expected, and its the time of year where people usually first look at the standings and start to wonder who could be playoff teams.
Not a group familiar with that kind of positive publicity, it's easy to see them getting a little more full on their suddenly new diet of good media vibes.
That comfortability hurt them, as it was the first time all season the Flyers penalty kill, which entered the game No. 4 in the league, was torched.
They had only allowed more than one power play goal against in a game once all season, and never three until Monday. The last time they had allowed three in a game was also against Pittsburgh in the last game before Christmas last year, a 7-3 blowout loss on Dec. 23, 2024.
And while the Penguins have the best power play in the NHL so far this year, Tocchet said the contributing factor for their success was because the penalty kill unit had fallen into some bad habits in recent games and it finally caught up to them in a big way.
"We got to clean up the PK," he said. "I haven't really liked the structure of the PK the last five games. We got lucky a little bit because Vlady has been good, or (Sam) Ersson. We got to clean up the structure part of it."
I asked Tocchet if he could dive into what hasn't been right with the penalty kill. He was more than happy to oblige.
"We've been running around lately," he said. "We play an aggressive diamond. If you look at the goals, after the (first) shot, two guys ran out of position and it opens up the middle - twice. Those are killers. If you give up the flanker shots, you can (usually) live with that. But, on the (Bryan) Rust [goal] Sanny (Travis Sanheim) has to get out there. That's his flex. He was backing in too much. He flexes out. His job is to take the weak side away so Vlady can see it. Things like that. Maybe it's guys being tired. Mentally tired. I don't know."
Bryan Rust - Pittsburgh Penguins (8)
Power Play Goal pic.twitter.com/0XjVijWL8S
The Flyers have to rebound quickly - something they've done well so far this season, having only gone more than one game without earning at least one point in the standings once, when they lost consecutive games in regulation to Toronto and Calgary on back-to-back nights in the beginning of November.
They'll get that chance against a Buffalo Sabres team on Wednesday that's at the bottom of the Eastern Conference before three days off and then another stretch of five games in eight days.
It's time to get back on the horse, and these guys know it.
"We just got to focus on the little things like we had on the road," said Noah Cates. "You can't get away from that when you get home and kind of get sleepy. Honestly, it just kind of felt like a sleepy effort from us. Not a lot of folks ... there was not a lot of jam to our game."
