Yes, the Flyers are rebuilding. But John Tortorella’s team has to be more competitive than this.

The gap between the team the Flyers eventually hope to be and the team they are now is growing wider every game. This is a rebuild, still. There are going to be ugly losses, such as their one to the Washington Capitals, 4-1, on Tuesday. There are going to be long nights, and this was one. The atmosphere at the Wells Fargo Center was fit for a casual midafternoon family skate, aside from the occasional and predictable booing as each period ended. Six games into this season, the atmosphere was not fit for a team that is supposed to be at least a little interesting, if not good.

This is a rebuild, still, and rebuilds are usually slogs, and Tuesday was one of those steps when one of the Flyers’ boots stayed stuck in the deep muck. They allowed the Capitals to score two shorthanded breakaway goals in the first period. They cut the lead in half early in the third period, thanks to Travis Sanheim, then gave up another goal 64 seconds later. Their collective confidence is at low ebb.

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“When the wins are not coming, it’ll obviously hurt the confidence a little bit,” goaltender Sam Ersson said. “But everybody believes in this group. When we get rolling, we know we’ll take off.”

That sounds wonderful. There was a fair bit of that half-whispered optimism among the players and coach John Tortorella after Tuesday’s game, after it took the Flyers more than five periods, between a 3-0 blanking by the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday and this snoozer against the Caps, to score a goal in their home rink. We’re squeezing the sticks too tight. We’re trying too hard. We didn’t play badly. We just didn’t finish. Just need some puck luck.

But the stick-gripping and the frustration account for only so much of the issue here. The Flyers enter their Wednesday-night rematch with Washington, this one at Capital One Arena, having lost five straight games and, dating to last season, 17 of their last 22. The good feelings that they generated through their first 70 games of 2023-24, when they surprised most everyone by making a bid for a playoff berth pretty much through sheer effort, have mostly faded. They were not a competitive team during that eight-game losing streak that started in late March and ended in mid-April. And given that they have surrendered 23 goals and scored just 11 during this recent five-gamer, it’s difficult to call them a competitive team now.

“I don’t equate the start of this year toward last year,” Tortorella said. “I think there are other reasons why it ended the way it did last year, and I don’t think that’s what it is here. We’re not scoring. As we start to get more frustrated, that’s when we started to give up chances. We have to keep on fighting and try to force good things to come our way.

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“We’re going to figure this out. We just have to go through it together and not lose ourselves in frustration and forget about how we play.”

Understand what figure this out means here. It doesn’t mean, as Ersson suggested, that the Flyers are bound to rip off six straight victories once Travis Konecny, Matvei Michkov, and Owen Tippett begin humming. It means that the Flyers, win or lose, have to be a harder team to play against. That’s the whole point of having Tortorella as the head coach. He’s supposed to be the quasi-drill sergeant here, the character-builder, the man-maker. Survive him and his demands, and these young players will go from sacks of wet cement to blocks of concrete, right? So far, there’s little sign that this is a quick-dry club.

“Turning pucks over, undisciplined,” said Sean Couturier, the team’s captain. “We’re turning pucks over, feeding right into their transition. That causes us to take bad penalties chasing the puck. We’ve got to manage the puck better. It’s tough on Torts. We’re taking so many penalties that it gets us out of the flow of the game. That’s on us. We’ve got to be more disciplined.”

Yes, they do. A win would help. Consecutive games in which they simply play smarter, stronger hockey, regardless of the outcomes, would be even better, would be reassuring for everyone in the organization. This is a rebuild, still. This is a long dark tunnel, and the Flyers are trudging through it. At the moment, though, they need to find themselves a flashlight, just to be sure.