The Flyers lost in Boston on Saturday, 5-1, and the score barely matters at this point. Philadelphia is 0-4-2, the only winless team left in the Eastern Conference, and has scored fewer goals through six games than any team in franchise history. Rick Tocchet broke this roster, and he shouldn't get a full season to put it back together.
Start with the plain arithmetic. Seven goals in six games is a franchise low going back to 1967. A 7-0 opening-night loss to Pittsburgh was the worst season-opening defeat in Flyers history. Six straight losses to open a season has happened to this franchise only one other time. Numbers like that come from building a team that can't score and then coaching it in a way that keeps it that way.
The clearest evidence is sitting on Tocchet's own bench. Matvei Michkov, the most talented player on this roster, was getting close to 19 and a half minutes a night under interim coach Brad Shaw last spring. Entering Saturday's game, under Tocchet, he was down around 15 and a half minutes a night, and in Boston he logged only 15:35. Porter Martone, a rookie who scored the Flyers' only goal of the night on the power play, played even less. This is a choice Tocchet makes every night: he plays his most dangerous players less than a guy filling in on an interim basis gave them last spring.
The injuries are real and they matter. Travis Konecny, Cam York and Rasmus Ristolainen were all unavailable, and losing a top scorer and two defensemen would strain any lineup. Injuries explain close losses. Coaching explains a team that can't score at all, and a coach who keeps squeezing the one guy capable of creating something out of nothing out of the lineup instead of feeding him more minutes.
The case for patience says six games is nothing, that a five-year coach who took this team to the second round last spring deserves more than a cold October before anyone hits the panic button. It would be more convincing if the problem looked like bad bounces. Instead it looks like a conservative, risk-averse system strangling the only parts of this roster that can actually create offense, run by a coach who had the whole offseason to build something better and chose this instead.
Boston did exactly what a team with its legs under it is supposed to do: get contributions up and down the lineup and finish a homestand with a winning record. The Flyers are left explaining why a rookie looked like the only player on the ice willing to compete for anything.
The clock has already run out on Tocchet, and he needs to be told that, and if Philadelphia's front office won't say it out loud yet, it's only because they're hoping one win makes the math go away. It won't. A coach who benches his best young talent while his team sets records for offensive futility is the problem. He should be out of a job before this gets any worse.
