Like the contestant on Wheel of Fortune who can’t quite solve the puzzle that everyone watching on television already knows, has blurted out loud several times to no one in particular (and has called this person every name in the book for being so clueless), the Flyers spun the wheel again Monday night to determine just how they were going to lose this time.

And when it landed on “better overall effort, but the first mistake leads to an immediate second mistake before a brief rally and then an eventual third period meltdown,” those of us tasked to watch every last ember incinerate inside this dumpster knew exactly what was going to happen.

The Flyers lost their eighth straight game, 4-1 to the New York Islanders. They now have losing skids of eight and 10 games this season. The only team in franchise history to lose 10 in a row twice in the same season was the 2006-07 team, widely considered to be the worst Flyers team ever.

Defensive errors led to two goals against in the second period, the second coming just 2:44 after the first as the Flyers immediately went into “Oh shit” mode after letting up the first goal, as they are wont to do.

Travis Konecny ended his 20-game goalless drought with a fluke goal. He didn’t even shoot it, he was passing the puck across the slot and it took two crazy caroms off of one Islander stick and then off another player’s shoulder before fluttering into the net.

That made it 2-1, and yes, the Flyers had a really good second period aside from allowing the two goals, outshooting New York 13-7. After the lucky Konecny goal, the 100th of his career by the way, the Flyers felt they were back in it.

That is, until the Islanders turned into pythons and squeezed the life out of the Flyers in the third period with text book smothering defense that totally frustrated them. Two more goals were scored, including an empty-netter.

Ho hum, you’ve seen this rerun.

That’s why we didn’t need to hear interim coach Mike Yeo talk about how they’re playing more and more the right way for longer stretches only to be undone by a couple of mistakes.

We don’t need any more player analysis of the way the game was played. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Here’s all Flyers fans need to care about over the course of the next 44 (ugh!) games and the next three months:

  • How does Carter Hart look? Is he at least keeping the team in games by playing well, or does he resort back to the goalie from last year who was terrible? This is actually critical.
  • Cam York is likely here to stay. Now, does his game develop as it should? This matters because you want to go into next season counting on him to be a part of the everyday lineup, and you don’t want him picking up and developing any bad habits from his teammates when the team is playing so poorly.
  • Wade Allison will be here soon. Get him and Joel Farabee playing with creative players and see if they can continue to grow as consistent goal scorers.
  • Get Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis healthy. If that means shutting them both down for the season to heal and be 100 percent for next season, so be it. It doesn’t matter at this point.
  • Unless you have someone interested in trading for Kevin Hayes’ contract, you might as well take the foot of the gas with him as well and have him try and get back to 100 percent for next season.
  • Eventually you want to bring Egor Zamula back up. Maybe not right now, as he’s not as close to NHL ready as York, but getting him a good 25 games playing regularly at the NHL level makes a lot of sense.
  • If you can trade Martin Jones because a playoff team is looking for a veteran backup goalie, do it and then let Felix Sandstrom and Kirill Ustimenko get a handful of NHL starts as Hart’s backups to see where they are developmentally and see if you need to address the backup goalie situation again next offseason or not.
  • Beyond that, it’s two months until the trade deadline. That’s a long way away. We already outlined how the Flyers should approach that deadline.
  • Here’s a thought…. bring in a new coaching staff. Why wait? Sure, in the offseason there may be more options as teams allow their assistants to be interviewed, or more coaches get fired that would be a good fit here. But unless you are sitting on your laurels waiting to see who wins the staring match between the St. Louis Blues and Craig Berube, you can act now. (For the record, the Blues are one of those teams that has a hardline budget, and they only have so many dollars they are willing to concede for coaching. From what I’ve been told, Berube wants a lot more than what the Blues are willing to pay. So, come season’s end, it’s possible, that like Barry Trotz did when he left Washington for the New York Islanders, Berube leaves for another gig even after a successful season.) If you don’t want to wait for the St. Louis drama to unfold, you could pursue John Tortorella, and see how certain players respond to him before deciding if you want to stick with those players or not. (Also for the record, the Flyers aren’t big on the notion of bringing back Rick Tocchet. From what I’m told, Chuck Fletcher likes other assistant coaches and/or younger coaches better than both Tocchet and Torts.)
  • Continuing on the coaching conversation, but adding a new thought – at the very least, don’t the Flyers need real assistant coaches? This isn’t a knock on the guys on the bench who are filling in for now. But Darryl Williams isn’t long for here. He was hired over the summer because he had worked with Alain Vigneault in both New York and Vancouver. One has to imagine he’s already thinking about his next gig considering his connection here was fired and the team hasn’t looked any better since the change was made. The other is Nick Schultz, who isn’t even a coach. He’s a player development guy. Why not, at the very least, bring Jason Smith up from the Phantoms? Here’s a former player who was beloved by teammates wherever he played (Hell, he was the captain here for the one season he played for the Flyers in 2007-08) and he was a very good defenseman. Even if ultimately he doesn’t pan out or you want him to get more seasoning coaching in the AHL, fine, at least he’s already on payroll and he wants to coach. What’s a half season for a dreadful team going to cost him? And maybe, just maybe, he can get a message through to key players who are going to be part of this franchise beyond this season like York, Ivan Provorov, and maybe even Rasmus Ristolainen and Travis Sanheim.

The Flyers and Islanders will be right back at it tonight at the Wells Fargo Center. Should be an electric atmosphere.

Sarcasm folks. Sarcasm. Give me some leeway. There’s a lot of unimportant hockey still to write about this season.

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