The Flyers got shut out again Sunday in Colorado, 2-0.
It's the third straight game they've been blanked, which set a franchise-worst mark, and became their fifth loss in the last six games.
They've been outscored 21-6 during that stretch, and as of Monday morning, they sit second from the bottom of the Eastern Conference at 23-25-6 and at a minus-29 goal differential.
The spiral predates last week's trade of former mainstays Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee to Calgary, but at the same time, that move served to solidify this season's fate: Danny Brière and the front office are going to let this bottom out. The rest of the year is going to get real lean for the Flyers from here.
That was evident – painfully perhaps – on Sunday in Colorado, with a lineup stretched way too thin.
The Flyers dressed seven defensemen, and the forward lines, even at one short, had to be filled out with AHL call-ups Anthony Richard, Rodrigo Ābols, and Jacob Gaucher in his debut.
It was not a group meant to keep up with a Colorado team that can put Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar out on the ice.
Obviously, Frost and Farabee not being there anymore hurts, regardless of the ceilings they hit in Philly, and it doesn't help either that the Flyers are still waiting on the returns in Andrei Kuzmenko and Jakob Pelletier to get to them and get settled in.
The current issues in the lineup, however, run deeper.
Owen Tippett has been out with injury after taking a big open-ice check last week against the Devils, Matvei Michkov appears to have hit the rookie wall in the 82-game schedule pretty hard (he hasn't registered a point in the last six games and only has five since the start of the new year), and maybe outside of Travis Konecy, who is struggling himself right now, too, there isn't anyone else on the roster with the ability to effectively score on their own this far into the season.
The Tyson Foerster-Noah Cates-Bobby Brink line will still show up to try and check whoever they're assigned to into the ground, but get past them and there's not much more resistance, even on the back end, which feeds into a seemingly ever-volatile goaltending situation between Sam Ersson, Ivan Fedotov, and Aleksei Kolosov.
Travis Sanheim continues to eat up heavy minutes as the top defenseman, but since getting the Team Canada nod for 4 Nations in early December, he's fallen into a minus-8 rut and during the current six-game downswing, a minus-10 hole.
Jamie Drysdale is slowly but surely coming along, but he had a brutal minus-3 night against the Islanders on Thursday and the organization has been vocal that he's very much still a work in progress in learning how to defend.
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Emil Andrae is getting another look, which bodes well for the future, and Cam York and Nick Seeler aren't going anywhere for now, but then Rasmus Ristolainen – granted, he didn't play in the third period on Sunday – sits there as one of the big defensive trade chips ahead of the March 7 deadline.
In many ways, he has been appearing to occupy the same spot Sean Walker did last deadline season, and if and when Brière gets the future haul he's looking for, he's going to act on it despite the toll it'll take on the current roster. The GM has already shown this season and last that he isn't afraid of that.
It's the reality of a rebuild, and a necessity for the future the Flyers want to create, one day, as a true Stanley Cup Contender.
But right now, things are going to be lean. Real lean.
Brace yourselves.
"I think we're just not scoring, so it looks worse than it is," captain Sean Couturier said after the Avalanche loss. "We're always behind. I mean, at some point, we gotta score some goals. It's just about trying to play with the lead at one point."
But that's easier said than done with the way the Flyers are right now – and in a way, by design.
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