The Flyers play at the Rangers tonight, and the road record is the problem that keeps getting louder.
Philadelphia is 4-9-4 for 12 points, 30th in the NHL and 8th in the Metropolitan Division. Tuesday's 2-4 home loss to Minnesota only added to the pile.
The split is ugly. The Flyers are 1-5-1 away from home, compared with 3-4-3 at Wells Fargo Center, and Rick Tocchet's group hasn't found a way to travel with any confidence.
The goal differential explains a lot of it. Philadelphia has scored 37 and allowed 58, a -21 gap that is the kind of hole a team doesn't climb out of with one good week.
That's 21 more goals against than for, and the Flyers still have 17 games of evidence behind it. Last 10 is 4-4-2, which is respectable on paper, but the full-season numbers say the early damage is real.
Tonight's opponent isn't exactly a juggernaut at home, but it's no soft landing either. The Rangers are 8-7-1, and they're 7-2-0 at Madison Square Garden. Their goal differential sits at +1, nowhere near the Flyers' hole, and they won 3-1 against St. Louis on Tuesday.
Who is actually scoring for the Flyers
Matvei Michkov is doing the heavy lifting. He has 10 goals and 13 points in 17 games, and five of those goals have come on the power play.
Trevor Zegras has been the other driver, with 14 points on 4 goals and 10 assists. Six of his assists have come with the man advantage, so both of them are leaning hard on special teams.
That's the concern we raised when we wrote that the Flyers need more than Zegras and Michkov. Two players carrying the load can keep a team in games. It doesn't win many on the road.
Michkov's -10 rating is the odd detail next to his production. He's scoring, but the team is still getting outscored when he's on the ice, and that tells you where the rest of the lineup needs to step up.
What the Flyers need tonight is simple: a road game where the secondary scoring shows up and the goals against stop piling up. They've won once away from home in seven tries, and the Rangers have the same 1-5-1 road mark, so someone's trend breaks at the Garden.
