The Flyers visit the Rangers on Thursday night, and the numbers say the lineup has a production problem that goes beyond one loss.
Philadelphia is 4-9-4 after Tuesday's 4-2 defeat to the Wild. Rick Tocchet's team has 12 points and sits 29th in the NHL, which is not where a group with this much young talent was supposed to be in early November.
The goal differential is the ugliest number on the page. The Flyers have scored 37 and allowed 58, a -21 that puts them eighth in the Metropolitan Division.
Trevor Zegras leads the team with 14 points, four goals and 10 assists. He also carries a -5 rating, so the production is real but it hasn't turned into wins.
Matvei Michkov has been the goal scorer, with 10 goals and 13 points. But he is a -10, and five of those goals have come on the power play. The Michkov workload on a 29th-place team has been a theme all week.
Porter Martone is the third piece worth watching. He has eight points in 17 games, including two power-play goals, and he logged 13:10 against the Wild.
## PLACEHOLDER
Tuesday's game showed how thin the secondary scoring is. Denver Barkey scored on the power play and Tyson Foerster added a goal, but Minnesota still pulled away.
Foerster has three goals in 16 games this season, one of them short-handed. Barkey has six points in 14 games. Those are the kind of depth numbers that have to climb if Philadelphia wants to stop leaning on two names.
Daniel Vladar stopped 18 of 21 shots against the Wild. That's an acceptable night for a goalie, and it still ended in a loss because the Flyers couldn't match Minnesota's finish.
New York is 8-7-1 and 18th in the NHL, with a +1 goal differential. The Rangers won their last game 3-1 over St. Louis, so this is not a team in freefall.
Mike Sullivan's group is 7-2-0 at home, though, and that's where this one will be played. Philadelphia has to find offense from somewhere other than Zegras and Michkov, because the standings aren't going to wait. The Flyers play the Rangers again after Thursday only if the schedule says so, and for now the next answer comes at Madison Square Garden.
