Flyers at 0-5-2: the numbers behind Philadelphia's worst start ever

Sunday night in Philadelphia ended with a chant no team wants to hear at home. As Carolina closed out a 4-1 win, Flyers fans called for coach Rick Tocchet's job.

The loss dropped the Flyers to 0-5-2. That is a franchise record: no Flyers team had ever gone seven games without a win to open a season. The old mark was six, shared by the 1999-00 and 2008-09 teams, and both of those clubs won game seven.

Rewind to the spring and it looks even worse. Since taking a 3-0 series lead on Pittsburgh in the first round, the Flyers have lost 13 of their last 14 games, the AP noted. The one win was a 1-0 overtime Game 6 that closed out the Penguins. Carolina then swept them in four.

So is this bad luck, or is something broken? We pulled every box score of the season from ESPN to answer it. Four numbers tell the story.

Number one: 20 shots a night

Philadelphia has put 140 shots on goal in seven games. That is 20 a night. Opponents have put 246 on the Flyers' net, a little over 35 a night.

The Flyers have been outshot in six of seven games, and five times they failed to reach 20 shots. New Jersey outshot them 44-25. Carolina did it 40-18 on Oct. 3. Tampa Bay won the count 36-15, and Boston 32-15.

The one night they won the shot battle tells you how thin the margin is. In Ottawa on Oct. 8, the Flyers outshot the Senators 29-26 and still lost 2-1, because Linus Ullmark stopped 28 of 29.

Run into a hot goalie once and you shrug it off. But when 20 shots is a normal night, the Flyers need near-perfect finishing to win, and they have not had it.

Number two: 8 goals, 5.7 percent

The Flyers have scored eight goals all season and allowed 28. Eight goals on 140 shots is a 5.7 shooting percentage. They have scored one goal or none in five of seven games, starting with a 7-0 loss to Pittsburgh on opening night.

The goals have come from seven different players. Matvei Michkov is the only Flyer with two. Trevor Zegras, who scored a career-high 26 goals last season and then signed a four-year, $36.5 million extension, has two points and no goals so far, per the AP.

Low shot volume plus cold finishing is the worst combination in hockey. A team can survive one of those for a week. Both at once, for seven games, is how you end up last in the Metropolitan Division.

The power play has not bailed them out either. Philadelphia is 2 for 21 with the man advantage, about 9.5 percent, and it has been blanked on the power play in five of seven games.

Number three: .914 in net

Here is the part that should worry Flyers fans most: the goaltending has mostly held up its end.

Joseph Woll has stopped 128 of the 140 shots he has faced in four starts, a .914 save percentage. He made 41 saves in an overtime loss at New Jersey and 37 in an overtime loss to Carolina. Woll alone has faced 140 shots. That is the same number the entire Flyers roster has put on net all season.

Dan Vladar has had it rougher, stopping 90 of 105 for an .857 in three starts. But two of those starts came in the 7-0 opener and the 5-1 loss in Boston, nights when the skaters in front of him were overrun. In his third, at Tampa Bay, he stopped 32 of 35.

The two overtime losses hurt the most, because the Flyers held a third-period lead in both. In New Jersey, Travis Sanheim put them up 2-1 early in the third. Luke Hughes tied it a little over four minutes later, and Jack Hughes won it in overtime. Against Carolina, Michkov's second-period goal had them up 2-1. Sebastian Aho tied it on a third-period power play, and Shayne Gostisbehere won it on another power play in overtime.

"I think we go off the rails at certain points of the game," Tocchet told the AP after Sunday's loss. His captain, Sean Couturier, put it more bluntly: "We can't skill our way out of this one."

Number four: 26 goals coming to town

The schedule does not ease up. Seattle visits Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET, and the Kraken arrive at 4-2-0 with 26 goals in six games. They have scored five or more in four of those six, including a 5-3 win in Washington on Sunday. After that, the Flyers head to Detroit on Thursday.

It also gets harder before it gets easier on the roster. Travis Konecny, Cam York and Rasmus Ristolainen are all out, according to the AP. York scored the overtime winner in that 1-0 Game 6 in April, the last game the Flyers won.

None of this means the season is over. Seven games is a small sample, and this group won its first playoff series since 2020 just months ago. But the shot numbers are not a fluke of one bad night. They have shown up in six of seven games.

What it means on the board

• Team totals: a team that has scored one goal or none in five of seven games is the profile that makes a Flyers team total worth checking every night. The read still depends on the opposing starter and the Flyers' lineup that day.
• Saves markets: opposing goalies are seeing about 20 Flyers shots a night, while Flyers goalies face about 35. That gap is why we look at shot volume before the goalie's name when we read saves props for either starter.
• Shots on goal: 20 shots a night split across a full lineup leaves less room for individual shooters. Shots-on-goal props on Flyers skaters are a market where this trend shows up first.
• Watch for the turn: if the Flyers start reaching 25-plus shots against Seattle or Detroit, that is the first real sign the numbers are moving, and the board will move with them.

Get Tuesday's full slate on the NHL board and free picks, read the Hurricanes vs. Flyers recap, and see how a total works if team totals are new to you.

21+. Research and commentary, not betting advice.