Here are three numbers that could change the Flyers’ season after consecutive losses

ELMONT, N.Y. — Long Island native Billy Joel once sang, “Don’t ask me why.”

But maybe the Flyers should ask that after suffering their 22nd loss of the season, the sixth-most in the NHL.

Time is ticking. They cannot ask for favors with just 32 games left. And they certainly cannot wait for answers. They need to take their chances. After all, 13 regulation wins won’t cut it for a team three points back of a wild-card spot, entering Saturday.

Maybe they can kill them in the classic style of Flyers hockey? With that, here are three big numbers to know — and three things that could change their course the rest of the way — from the 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders on Friday night.

This season the Flyers are tied for the sixth-worst goal differential at minus-21. Why is that an important stat? Teams with a negative goal differential rarely make it to the postseason. In some seasons there are zero and, sure, now and then there’s one or two that slip in, like the 2015-16 Flyers. But they were only at minus-4.

There is no denying that finishing has plagued the Flyers — for years — and, once again, it is hurting them. You need to score more than your opponents, and in the past two games, they’ve scored twice. Their opponents? Nine times.

According to Natural Stat Trick, the Flyers had 65 shot attempts, including 14 high-danger chances, with 30 shots on goal against the Islanders. They scored once.

“I thought we played with energy. We couldn’t score,” said coach John Tortorella.

It’s a startling trend for the Orange and Black. Across the season, the Flyers have buried 150 pucks while allowing 171. But when they lose, it’s an eye-opening 50 goals for and 106 against.

Tortorella told the media there were no line changes before Friday’s game, but that was not what happened once the team went out for warmups. Egor Zamula is out day-to-day with an upper-body ailment and Erik Johnson was slotted in.

Although he could have slotted Johnson in next to Rasmus Ristolainen and kept the rest of the defensive pairings together, he did not. Jamie Drysdale and Nick Seeler, who have become a reliable duo, were split up as was the top pairing of Cam York and Travis Sanheim, who have played almost the whole season together.

Drysdale and Sanheim started together at five-on-five and were on the ice for two of the three Islanders goals; Sanheim was on the ice for all. Seeler and Johnson were OK but couldn’t generate much despite spending most of their time with Sean Couturier, Joel Farabee, and Matvei Michkov. It might have been best to keep Seeler and Drysdale together.

“The name of the game tonight for me was odd-man rushes. We gave them two freebie two-on-ones at the end of the first, and then kind of a broken play in the second. And that’s kind of the game right there. We couldn’t really get our footing back,” Johnson said.

Johnson stressed that the shifting of pairings wasn’t an issue as they practiced together. The pairing of York and Ristolainen? When they were on the ice together at five-on-five, the Flyers had 62.07% of the shot attempts. And they played together for more than 11 minutes.

» READ MORE: Here are two dos and don'ts from Flyers' loss to Rangers

York had one of his strongest games generating offense, with eight shot attempts, four scoring chances, and four high-danger shot attempts. Five of his shots did miss the net but two hit it. In the second period, he joined the rush and got a great spin pass from Michkov before being robbed by goalie Ilya Sorokin. York just missed poking in the rebound at the left post and then Michkov whiffed on a shot at the right.

Maybe York needs more of a stay-at-home defenseman on his right? Ristolainen can be offensive too, as noted by one of his rushes up the ice on Friday, but the pairing has a strong balance. Natural Stat Trick has them playing together for 48 minutes, 3 seconds in 36 games this season with a Corsi For percentage of 59.78%, which ranks No. 2 among pairings that have played at least 30 minutes together at five-on-five.

The Flyers have just one win on the second night of a back-to-back this season in nine tries. Yikes. And they have four more coming up. Double yikes.

“Yeah, a little bit of everything,” Couturier said when asked why. “It’s fatigue, but it’s something that — I feel like last year, we were pretty good on back-to-backs. So, yeah, we’re struggling right now. Can’t pinpoint anything. We used to be better, find ways to get wins; right now, we’re not so, not sure the exact reason, but it’s definitely an area that we got to be better.”

Last season the Flyers were 5-5-2 on the second night after going 6-6-0 the first night. One of those losses started the eight-game swoon and another came during it. This season they are 5-3-1 to start and then 1-7-1.

Have the Flyers had some battles the first night? Absolutely. Although they’ve been outscored by four goals (28 to 32), some of those wins include the wild, pun intended, 7-5 victory against the Minnesota Wild — before a 4-3 loss to the Montreal Canadiens in Aleksei Kolosov’s NHL debut — and the 4-3 comeback win against the Florida Panthers 12 days ago. They lost the next night in a shootout to the Columbus Blue Jackets.

But in the second half of the two-game sets, they have been outscored 39-24. Four of those games saw the opposition score at least five goals, with the Los Angeles Kings putting a touchdown and extra point on the board.

» READ MORE: Liberties are developing girls’ hockey with a sense of community: ‘You just gain 20 sisters’

All but one of the nine-game sets involved traveling but Johnson isn’t using that or fatigue as an excuse.

“We’re just up the road, so, you know, I don’t put a whole lot into that,” he said about a Flyers team that went from New York City to Long Island. “Tough to not get any points on the back-to-back here. We’re in a tight playoff race so it’s unfortunate. I thought we played hard but that really doesn’t matter, you have to get points.”