Tyler Johnson

The Flyers close out the 2022-23 season with one final game on the road against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday night.

The Flyers could never seem to find the ability to finish and paid for their mistakes in a 4-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks at Wells Fargo Center on Thursday night.

With the Sixers down a bunch of players on the reserve/COVID list, the team is bring in former Heat, Suns and Nets guard Tyler Johnson.

The Tampa Bay Lightning built the foundation of their championship team through the draft and had to experience a lot of failure before reaching the top. The Flyers may be in the early stages of following the same blueprint.

Both teams received power plays in overtime, but it was a call made at the end of regulation and another on Stars captain Jamie Benn in overtime that caused the most talk, leading to the game-winning goal from Kevin Shattenkirk that gave the Lightning a 5-4 win and a 3-1 series lead on Friday night.

Nicolas Aube-Kubel scored two goals, Joel Farabee added another and Carter Hart made 23 saves to secure a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning and claim the top seed on Saturday night. 

The Flyers play the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night in a battle for the top seed in the Eastern Conference. The winner plays their first-round series against the 12-seed Montreal Canadiens. The loser gets the second seed and plays the winner of the series between Toronto and Columbus. Game time is 8 p.m.

In Saturday's game against the red-hot Tampa Bay Lightning, the Flyers fell behind early and fell into a 3-0 hole again. Instead of erasing the deficit, the Flyers were down by two in the third and challenging to cut into the deficit further before they made the one mistake that did them in. The Flyers got two goals in short order after falling behind 4-1 with under eight minutes to play in the third, but were not able to complete the comeback in a 5-3 loss to the Lightning.

Allowing three power-play goals, six goals to even the most potent offense in the Tampa Bay Lightning and making enough fundamental mistakes to create a deficit in the first place don't look good. But the rally showed some character. It may not be a win but the Flyers need to channel this effort late in the game into better results from here.