The Flyers are 30th in the NHL at 4-9-4 as they get ready to visit the Rangers tonight, and the goal column explains most of it.
They have scored 37 goals and allowed 58, a gap of 21 that Rick Tocchet has not been able to close. The 2-4 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday only added to it.
Twelve points in 17 games has Philadelphia eighth in the Metropolitan Division. The standings show how much ground sits between the Flyers and everyone above them.
Home hasn't been a refuge either. The Flyers are 3-4-3 at the Wells Fargo Center, and their last 10 sits at 4-4-2, so this isn't only a bad run that arrived out of nowhere.
Offense is the first place to look, and it keeps coming back to the same names. We went through that in detail when we wrote that the Flyers need more than Zegras and Michkov against New York.
Matvei Michkov has 10 goals and 13 points in 17 games, five of those goals on the power play. Trevor Zegras has 14 points, with six of his ten assists coming on the man advantage.
Who else is scoring for the Flyers?
Porter Martone is third on the list with 8 points, three of them goals. That's a respectable return for a 20-year-old, but it also shows how thin the group behind the top two really is.
Michkov is a -10 and Zegras and Martone are both -5. The players producing most are also on the ice for a lot of goals against, which says the issue isn't confined to one end of the rink.
Fifty-eight goals against is the number that should worry Tocchet most. A team can survive a middling offense if the back end holds, and the Flyers' back end hasn't held.
New York is 8-7-1 and 18th in the league, with a +1 goal differential. The Rangers are 7-2-0 at home, so this is not a soft landing for a team trying to stop a slide.
Philadelphia has the firepower to hang in a game for a period or two. Whether anyone beyond three forwards can tilt one is the question the Flyers still can't answer going into tonight's puck drop.
