It looked like the Flyers were going to turn a corner after starting their season-long eight-game road trip with three-consecutive wins. Between a season-high seven goals to open the trip against Toronto, a comeback win over a resurgent Winnipeg team and a resounding win over a middling Minnesota Wild squad, things were looking good for the Flyers.
Five losses later, the team returns home. They closed out their road trip almost the polar opposite of the way they started it, with a 5-2 loss against the New Jersey Devils.
"We didn't do any justice to ourselves these last couple of days," said Steve Mason — who mopped up for Ray Emery to start the second period after the Flyers found themselves in a 3-0 hole. "We should have had four points…we came up with some pretty flat efforts.
"At this point of the year…it's completely unacceptable."
The Flyers also found themselves without two centermen — Claude Giroux and Scott Laughton. A cut to Giroux's leg suffered in Friday's loss to Carolina led to him missing his first game since April 2012, while Laughton will be further evaluated on Sunday after sustaining an undisclosed injury — which Craig Berube doesn't expect to decommission him for too long.
"Obviously that [stinks]," Wayne Simmonds said, "but the way we played tonight, we could've had Wayne Gretzky in our lineup [and] I don't know if we would've won."
When the Flyers return home on Tuesday against Ottawa, Berube expressed that he wasn't sure whether or not Giroux would return to the lineup.
The Flyers sit at sixth place in the Metropolitan Division, and their 35 points are now tied with the Devils. The past two games were critical, and the Flyers blew a critical opportunity to gain ground in the division by beating two teams lower than them.
"For me, the last two games weren't very good," Berube said. "I thought that in Nashville, [Arizona] and Colorado, we gave ourselves a chance to win. I thought we played some good hockey, but we didn’t get the results. We dug ourselves a hole."
As one can infer, eight-game road trips are anything but easy, especially if they swing all over North America. It's not easy to go from one game in the Mountain Time Zone to two games on the East Coast in the span of four games, and that translated on the ice for the Orange and Black.
"We didn’t come out with the energy and the emotion that was needed to win a hockey game," Berube said.
The Flyers begin a stretch of four home games Tuesday night. They have an opportunity to put this horrid end to their road swing behind them. With the season quickly approaching its halfway point, the Flyers still have plenty of climbing to do.
Rob Riches is a contributor to Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Riches61.
