Flyers Head Into Bye Week Searching for Answers

WASHINGTON — If this isn’t rock bottom, how far must the Flyers fall before they get there?

That’s the question they’ll all think about for a week after the Washington Capitals handed them their worst loss of the season just in time for the newly-instituted bye week.

“This is pretty bad. I don’t know how much worse we can get,” Wayne Simmmonds said. “I think it’s a combination of things. I don’t think it’s effort or anything like that. It’s the execution. We have plays, they’re there and we’re not executing them as we should or as we have in the past and it’s hurting us.”

For 40 minutes it looked like the Flyers had a shot and then the league’s best team took over and spanked the struggling Flyers 5-0. Four goals came in a five-minute span of the third period.

That was certainly the case in the first two periods, when the Flyers were down only 1-0, but were the better team. They outshot the Capitals 13-5 in the first period and the only reason they were kept off the scoreboard was backup goalie Philipp Grubauer, whose 24 saves gave him his second shutout of the season.

Washington didn’t score until 9:08 of the second period. They were on the power play, but Michael Del Zotto was ready to clear the zone when he whiffed on the puck. Andre Burakovsky was there to pick it up and fire it over Steve Mason’s blocker.

“This one, it just kind of snowballed into a bad thing for them,” said Justin Williams, who had a pair of goals against the club that drafted him. “We scored a bunch of goals in a few minutes and all of a sudden it looks lopsided. I didn’t really care for our start. I thought we were kind of slow, not many shots. But our goalie seemed to be not letting anything in.”

He did let in one goal, but the Capitals got lucky.