Ivan Provorov

Less than 24 hours before the trade deadline, the Flyers were left with a stunning defeat to the Buffalo Sabres, the NHL lowest team in the standings, handed a loss by lowly Buffalo for the second time in two weeks. It was the most fitting of endings for a team that has continued to get in their own way all season.

The Flyers got one point by getting Thursday’s game against the Islanders to overtime, but suffered the same fate as their previous game in Long Island, falling in a shootout, 3-2.

The result was what the Flyers needed. How long it took was what they didn’t. In this critical week in their season, the one that will likely define whether they choose to buy or sell – or do a little of both – at the deadline, the Flyers needed to win games. They have one to start, certainly a step in the right direction. 

Travis Sanheim delivered, with the help of Patrice Bergeron going down as Sanheim moved in on a counter-rush. Sanheim scored on Dan Vladar to give the Flyers a 3-2 overtime win, the team’s first over the Bruins this season, on Monday night in Boston.

There are no moral victories when it comes to playoff races or trying to contend at this point in a season. You either find a way to win or you don’t and that single point still involves a point lost. That said, there are plenty of moral victories you can find in games like this when you are trying to determine what you have and what you need for the future. The Flyers got lessons in both on Saturday.

A pair of goals by Claude Giroux erased a two-goal deficit and Carter Hart was having an outstanding game. Unfortunately, the Islanders got the extra point in the shootout, defeating the Flyers, 3-2, on Saturday night.

How did the Flyers cap off this month? Quite possibly in the most fitting way, losing to a team that couldn’t win a game all month long, the only team that seemed to be finding a way to lose games more than the Flyers themselves. It wasn’t even a close loss, it was another embarrassment. The Buffalo Sabres snapped an 18-game winless streak as the Flyers closed March with a 6-1 defeat on Wednesday night.

The Flyers may be sitting fifth in the East, three points out of a playoffs, still very much mathematically alive. But their defense is in shambles. Almost every core player that was expected to produce on the higher end offensively has shown struggles. The goaltending has been questioned. To put it simply, the Flyers are a mess right now, and it’s become clear that the current system is just not working.

Monday’s game was a battle royale of mediocrity. This was a game that probably played out exactly as it should have in both result and process. Yes, the Flyers are a better team than the Sabres. The standings certainly reflect that. But for 40 minutes, they weren’t close to that, so much so that they not only once again dug a hole to the worst team in the league, requiring another frantic third-period rally, but they also had to shorten the bench to do it.