The Flyers stepped off the ice at the Wells Fargo Center Thursday night and into the unknown, for the next 16 or so hours and for the remaining 19 games on the schedule.
They lost to the Winnipeg Jets, 4-1, and that it was going to go that way was evident pretty quickly. There was no upsetting one of the best teams in the NHL this time, and whatever spark the Flyers had in the return from the 4 Nations break appears to have fizzled out.
They're still in the playoff picture, kind of, but every passing game where they fail to make up ground or at the very least keep pace in the East's Wild Card picture only further snuffs out what were already narrow hopes and shifts the focus of everyone watching more and more toward ping pong ball combinations for the draft lottery.
But directly in front of the Flyers now is Friday's 3 p.m. ET trade deadline, and the anxious wait to see whether any of the rumors surrounding Scott Laughton, and to a lessened extent, Rasmus Ristolainen materialize.
For now, the beloved veteran center and the much-improved defenseman are still here. They're still Philadelphia Flyers, and they were both on the ice to start Thursday night's game.
But Friday at 3 p.m. is still a lot of time for a lot of calls to happen. No one's probably going to be sleeping much tonight.
"I mean, I haven't heard anything, I haven't had any conversations, so, I mean pretty much status quo," Laughton told reporters huddled around him in the locker room after the team's morning skate in Voorhees – he knew why.
"But yeah, with all the rumors and stuff, I think it feels maybe a little bit more real this year," Laughton continued. "Whatever happens, happens, but…kind of reflect on – and it hasn't happened, and it might not happen, it may happen, so it's hard, but you definitely think about what's to come for you, and everything like that. So just trying to stay in the moment, I think I've done a good job of that."
The moment, though, has the Flyers in a nasty downswing.
Sam Ersson got the start again after he was pulled in Tuesday night's loss to Calgary just shy of 10 minutes in.
He got hung out to dry.
Mark Scheifele snuck down and cleaned up a rebound for the opening score on a power-play sequence where the Jets zipped the puck around and to front of the net at will.
Nikolaj Ehlers made it 2-0 on a tic-tac-toe setup where Travis Sanheim got lost in coverage and left the Winnipeg forward completely unmarked by the far post.
Kyle Connor, one of the league's natural goal scorers, jumped on the rush and skated right by the Flyers into their defensive zone, beating Ersson on a shot as he peeled off the wall to make it 3-0 in the second.
Then Adam Lowry made it 4-0 Jets on a one-time tap-in in front, generated off another rush that caught every Flyer on the ice back on their heels.
Lowry and the Jets take a commanding four-goal lead in the second period! ✈️ pic.twitter.com/XbLK4iXt2Z
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) March 7, 2025
Travis Konecny, still deep in a rut, slammed his stick over the post in frustration. Ersson, who just had to brunt the rest of the night, saved 24 of 28, but now has a run of three bad starts in a row going back to last Thursday's collapse in Pittsburgh.
And the Flyers on the whole, who just couldn't seem to capture any energy on Tuesday night against Calgary, definitely didn't discover any here as frustrated boos echoed through an emptying arena and an aimless third period. A Matvei Michkov snipe late only served to make the score look just a little bit better.
Now they're in the unknown, and in that uneasy wait to see who will still be wearing orange and black by 3:01 p.m. Friday.
"Status quo," Laughton, who has acknowledged the rumors around him the entire time, reiterated earlier Thursday. "I mean, I haven't hear anything, and I'm getting prepared to play a game and get two big points for our team. We're still fighting, and still going."
But they didn't do that, and now when it comes to Laughton, enters the thought of if that was it.
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