Reality of rebuild starting to sink in for Flyers

After Saturday’s 5-0 loss to the Hurricanes, some Flyers had a lot to say about the reality of the rest of the sinking season.

It’s often the case that whenever a team begins the part of a typical rebuild in the NHL that results in a whole lot of losses, someone — whether it is an executive from the front office of the head coach — says something along the lines of “there will be pain.”

For the Philadelphia Flyers right now, they are in the middle of the pain part.

Last season was surprisingly good all around. The team was able to stake their claim to a playoff spot for the majority of the campaign and they only fell off when Sam Ersson was fatigued and Sean Walker was traded for a forward-thinking haul at the trade deadline. But this season, it’s that tenfold.

Locker room nice boys Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee have been sent elsewhere. Culture leader Scott Laughton was traded to his boyhood team, skilled player Andrei Kuzmenko was quickly flipped to degrade the on-ice product, and finally, veteran leader Erik Johnson was moved for nothing to go chase another ring.

This is the tough part of the rebuild. Before we knew the Flyers were in the middle of one but wanted to stay competitive — these final 20 or so games are now the more traditional path. The well-worn journey that teams who pray for a top-five draft pick to change their fortunes. Danny Briere is dipping his toes in the waters that more fans are familiar with.

And after Saturday night’s abysmal 5-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, some players are acknowledging how this final stretch of this season feels and how the next few weeks are going to play out.

“You kind of look around, it looks a little thinner, a little quiet in the room,” Noah Cates said. “I think those guys get you through the tough times, the older presence and what they brought. I think guys stepped up a little bit, we were talking a little bit more. This is how it’s going to have to be, younger guys are going to have to step up. We’re not so young anymore, it’s kind of that time. In the years ahead, we’ve got to do that stuff.”

It’s a shift. The Flyers, like Cates said after the loss, can’t actively depend on the veteran depth players to be a more stable force during the trying times. Travis Konecny, Sean Couturier, and Travis Sanheim sure are the most stable players in the lineup now but they are having troubles of their own and the youth don’t have the reliable cement blocks they have grown to be used to.

“It’s a hard time and we’ve got some things ahead of us,” head coach John Tortorella said. “So we’ve just got to be together and try to help one another out because it’s going to be very difficult.”

Yes, it is going to be very difficult. The Flyers have 14 games left in their season. In what already feels like a campaign that is more than over, this team has 17 percent of their whole season in front of them. A fifth of the dang thing just being rotten is not the best way to go through a hockey season.

Especially when they put up stinkers like they did on Saturday night. At least Tortorella seemed to gleam some positives from the game and it was just looking at the other bench and how the team he is not in charge of, plays.

“It’s an eye-opener,” Tortorella said after the loss to the Hurricanes. “It just gives you an idea of where we need to get to. And I think there are teams that are better. But they are one of those teams that are always on their toes and they just press. They’re the best team in the league doing that. They force you into those battles, they’re very confident they’re going to win a lot of them. We certainly tried.”

The Flyers will continue trying this upcoming week. They start a road trip in Tampa and it leads them through a gauntlet of Washington, Dallas, Chicago, and then Toronto to reunite with Laughton at the end of it. Four very good teams who hope to go far in the playoffs and realistically can, and then one absolutely dreadful group of players in Illinois. The Flyers will be traveling all over the continent and most likely will be piling up some more losses.

We will continue counting down the days until we can say this season is over, too.