Flyers Need More Defense From Forwards

CHICAGO – Coach Craig Berube kept blowing his whistle during a drill in practice, telling forwards to help out the weak-side defenseman.

So far this season, the Flyers have had trouble with getting them to help out with defensive-zone coverage. Saturday night in Dallas they overcame that and won 6-5 in overtime for the first win of the season.

Not exactly a picture-perfect game plan.

“We got scored on five times,” Jake Voracek said. “Sometimes, obviously those games are going to go up and down, shotgun hockey, but we don’t want to play that kind of game against Chicago or we’re going to get killed. We’ve got to make sure we’re focusing on defense and we should be fine. It’s a long process. We need to find our defensive game as quickly as possible.”

Those defensive shortcomings are why the Flyers were 28th in the league heading into Monday’s action with an average of 3.80 goals against per game. It’s an indictment more of the team in front of the goalies than the goalies themselves.