Flyers focusing on incremental improvement down the stretch

The Flyers’ process might not be fixed yet, but they’re hoping to chip away at it through the remainder of the season.

Mar 9, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Flyers right wing Tyson Foerster (71) shoots the puck against New Jersey Devils left wing Ondrej Palat (18) during the first period at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

The month of March, to date, has not been kind to the Flyers. Though they kicked it off on a high note with a huge shootout win over the best of the West Jets, they came back home and dropped their next two before the trade deadline, and two more on the other side of it.

And while losing streaks happen over the course of a long season, the way these losses are coming is what’s causing particular alarm — uncharacteristically unsettled performances from Sam Ersson, skaters making passes right onto opponents’ tape, and an overwhelming look of being, to a noticeable degree, unfocused and checked out.

And frustration is beginning to mount for both players and coaching staff alike. After Saturday’s uninspired loss to Seattle, Flyers captain Sean Couturier lamented, “I don’t know if the effort’s the question, but maybe our sharpness, our focus wasn’t that good… Too many mistakes away from the puck. Too many chances going the other way.”

It’s felt like, in brief, things have been slipping away from the Flyers, of late. They haven’t really been finding themselves in these games, and the mistakes are mounting in a big way. “It’s going in the wrong direction as each game goes by,” John Tortorella said after the game, “and we’ve gotten worse. So we’ve just got to keep working at our game.” No one’s expecting a switch to be flipped and all things to snap completely back into perfect form, but the need was becoming desperate for things to at least start to move in the right direction for them again.

And indeed, yesterday’s 3-1 loss to the Devils — though still imperfect and tough to swallow in a number of ways — saw things beginning to shift a little more positively for the team. “To be honest, I thought we played a better game tonight than we have the last few games,” Jamie Drysdale, the team’s lone goal scorer, said after the game, noting that while it still wasn’t the result that they wanted to come away with, this effort was still something that they could work to build on.

This is a sentiment that his head coach echoed in his postgame remarks as well. “Yeah, we connected better,” Tortorella acknowledged. “We defended well. [The Devils] defend well as a team. Had some action around their net. We couldn’t get to rebounds. I thought they did a pretty good job of that. We played better [than] a few of the last games, so trying to step forward anyways.”

The overarching theme here, it would seem, is that of incremental improvement. The Flyers know well the situation they’re in — well out of a playoff spot and still chasing, but doing it with a much depleted lineup, and with their details slipping from them. And as much as they might like to make a run for a playoff spot, the focus of the remainder of the season is more reachably getting their game back to something closer to competitive, something they can be proud of. It’s not going to happen overnight, but yesterday’s game was the very first step of them chipping away at it. Their next opportunity lies in front of them as the Senators come to town tomorrow, and we’ll see what they can do with that then.