Saturday signaled the one-week mark of the beginning of the end for the Flyers. Last Saturday, the Flyers were 15 seconds away from moving within two points of the Boston Bruins for the final playoff spot.
One week later, the Flyers are now 10 points back of that spot. On Saturday afternoon, they welcomed the Detroit Red Wings to town. Detroit is currently third in the Atlantic Division.
You wouldn't have known it by the play on the ice. It marked the 10th straight home win for the Flyers against Red Wings, who are still in search of their first win at Wells Fargo Center since the 1997 Stanley Cup Final after Saturday's 7-2 shellacking.
"Team effort tonight," head coach Craig Berube said. "Really good game."
This was the second time this season the Flyers had scored seven goals. They also scored seven on Jan. 12 in a 7-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Just as there was on that Monday night in January, there were many unlikely sources of goal scoring.
Nick Grossmann beat Jimmy Howard with a high snap shot after cruising in alone following a great feed from Sean Couturier. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare fired a one-timer past Howard after a touch pass from Zac Rinaldo. Rinaldo scored a goal of his own after a quick pass through the slot by Ryan White. Matt Read also buried a nice touch pass from Andrew MacDonald.
Brayden Schenn nearly had a hat trick in the game as well. Schenn was credited with the first goal of the game on a deflection of a Mark Streit shot and scored on the power play again in the second, giving the Flyers a 3-1 lead through two. In the third, he scored again just 11 seconds into the period, just before Lou Nolan announced a change in scoring on the first goal to Wayne Simmonds.
"I asked the ref, 'can you give it back to him?'" Simmonds said. "They kind of shrugged me off. Brayden played an unbelievable game. He deserved that."
"I was talking to Simmer in the first intermission," Schenn said. "I tipped it, he tipped it right after me."
It didn't seem to matter who was doing the scoring. For a team that couldn't buy a goal since the heartbreak in Boston, there were goals aplenty for plenty of players looking for any kind of success.
"That's great," Simmonds said. "Guys have been working really hard and sometimes the bounces just don't go your way. Pucks were coming to us."
"It obviously feels good, but at the same time, to come in a winning effort," Schenn said. "Everyone was contributing tonight. It's just nice to help Mase out for once. He's been playing so well and we haven't been giving him the goal support."
For once, Steve Mason was not a headliner in the game. Instead, it was quietly another solid game for Mason, who made 31 saves in 14th win of the season.
It was a quietly successful game for Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek. Giroux had two assists, Voracek had one. The Flyers had only three players with no points in the game.
It was a shame to see the effort and excitement now, after a week that essentially destroyed all playoff hope left for the Flyers, especially after coming so close in so many games in previous weeks.
"I'm not going to look back on anything. We're done here now and I'm thinking about Ottawa," Berube said. "We obviously lost a lot of points to teams that maybe we should have beaten. I've said it before, if you don't give the effort and the preparation to any opponent, you can get beat."
It is certainly too late to go back in time and erase it all. It is over and nothing will magically resurrect the Flyers. But they can certainly finish the season strong if they give efforts like the one on Saturday. For a team with just nine road wins, a four-game road trip, and a new challenge, awaits.
"We need to really challenge ourselves to be a good road team on this trip," Berube said. "We need to go on the road and play real smart hockey and desperate hockey for sure."
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
