Embarrassment, a withering chase for the playoffs, and other Flyers takeaways from a bad night in Montreal

MONTREAL — After they gave up nine goals to the Montreal Canadiens.

After a Flyers jersey was tossed on the ice in disgust following the eighth one.

After the team’s losing streak hit eight games and they took a massive fall toward elimination ... the media entered the visiting locker room at Bell Centre five minutes after the game ended, as mandated by the NHL.

The room is not a big one. There’s not much room to maneuver around as a giant white pole is situated in it and carts for the players to throw their jerseys in are lined up in the middle. Healthy scratches Adam Ginning and Ronnie Attard, had to change in another room after the team’s optional morning skate because it didn’t have enough stalls for everyone.

But in that small room after the game, with the pole and the carts, reporters entered the room and were met with 25 sets of eyes staring back.

Every player that played was sitting in their stall still dressed. Most of them had all of their hockey equipment and jerseys still on. It was quite a sight as the room is almost always empty on the road when reporters make their way in, with guys hitting the showers to head out the door.

» READ MORE: Flyers drop eighth straight game in blowout loss at the Montreal Canadiens

Yet there they were, long after the game had ended, scratches and all, sitting in the room with the look on their faces like a group that just hit “rock bottom,” as head coach John Tortorella would say not too long after.

According to captain Sean Couturier, when asked in French whether it was Tortorella’s or the players’ decision to stay in their gear in the room, he hesitated before saying per the translation, “I would say organization decision.”

Why were they all there? Reporters in other markets noted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that this was a practice some teams employed back in the day. Veteran reporter Jim Matheson in Edmonton noted former Oilers coach and GM Glen Sather would make his group do it to be ready to answer for what just transpired. But while all sat there in the locker room on Tuesday, only two players were made available to speak to the media, Couturier and Travis Sanheim.

“Embarrassing, obviously,” was the first response to a question by Couturier, the team’s captain who returned after missing two games with an upper-body injury.

“No, not really,” he said when asked if there was any explanation. “The second [period], we just gave up a lot of odd-man rushes and weren’t responsible defensively and they made us pay.”

Indeed. The Canadiens scored five goals on 14 shots in the second period — four on nine shots by Sam Ersson alone. It was a stark difference from the first period where the Flyers showed big flashing signs that the team that occupied a playoff spot was still inside after giving up a goal 65 seconds into the game

“Hard to take any positives out of that one,” Sanheim said. “Obviously, not ideal to go down 1-0 early and seems like we’ve been chasing a lot lately and much of the same tonight.”

» READ MORE: Flyers roundtable: Will they make the playoffs? What’s next for John Tortorella?

But what stopped the team from maintaining their aggressive, hard style of play in the second period?

“I don’t know,” Couturier said. “I think it’s just maybe being a little too aggressive. Right now we’re struggling scoring goals, creating an offense — I shouldn’t say create offense, but finishing. Maybe we cheat a little bit and it cost us big time.”

Sanheim was asked about what went wrong and the defenseman responded: “We just couldn’t play in our D zone and they capitalized on a lot of their chances and we just weren’t good enough.”

The defensive zone struggles certainly did continue for the Flyers as coverage in their end was amiss for several reasons. Three prime examples:

Goal 1: two guys in front for Montreal, neither picked up, and Juraj Slafkovský nicks a shot by Mike Matheson past Ersson.

Goal 2: Two Flyers go to Nick Suzuki in the left circle, leaving Slafkovský alone at the far post. Jamie Drysdale sees the 2022 top pick all alone and points him out but doesn’t pick him up either, leaving him wide open for the easy goal.

Goal 6: Three Flyers congregate in the slot for one player with the puck. It allows two Canadiens to get behind them and Christian Dvorak scores the easy goal against Ivan Fedotov.

“They score their first goal right away, and you say, man,” Tortorella said regarding the Canadiens scoring early. “But I thought we gathered ourselves there and actually didn’t play a bad first period. But then, when they scored their second goal, we were running around a little bit, things just went the wrong way. A lot of unforced turnovers, just a lot of mistakes in our game.”

“These are hard lessons,” Tortorella said later. “One thing great about this league, and we’re on the wrong side of it, it’s unmerciful. When they get you, it’s unmerciful, and I love that about the league. We just happen to be on the wrong end of it right now.”

The Flyers have three games left and are on the outside looking in. They got some help on Tuesday night as the Washington Capitals topped the Detroit Red Wings to move into the final playoff spot. If the Red Wings had won, they would have moved three points ahead and all but ended the Flyers’ chances.

It won’t be easy for the Flyers to make the playoffs. Lose on Thursday and they’re all but done, especially with the Red Wings playing the Pittsburgh Penguins the same night. The winner of that game would have 86 points with three games left to play. If the Flyers lose, they stay at 83 points with two games left.

“We made a lot of mistakes tonight — turnovers, coverages, any part of the game there were mistakes and really, for the most part, it’s uncharacteristic of the club,” Tortorella said. “Even though when we’ve been going through the losing here, the last couple of games Columbus and here, we’ve just done some things that we haven’t done for a lot of the year.

“So you got to eat it and we got to stay together and try to solve things. Whether it’s enough time to do what we want to do to try to get in, I’m not concerned about that. I’m just concerned about just being pros, trying to get some of our dignity back and just playing the right way. I think that’s the most important part, that we got to stay together with it.”