The Florida Panthers have been scouting the Flyers hard of late. They even dispatched senior advisor Rick Dudley to the game against Vegas on Tuesday.

Then the Panthers got to see the Flyers in person Thursday night. And with the exception of the second period, when the Flyers showed some resilience and refused to quit, they have to wonder if adding a Flyers player before the deadline is worth their while.

The Panthers won 6-3. It was over in the first 20 minutes. Carter Hart was sensational in goal in that first period, and still gave up four goals.

That’s how bad the rest of the team was.

The Panthers took it to the Flyers in the first 20 minutes, collecting 18 shots on goal. And although the Flyers posted 15 themselves in the opening stanza, a lot of those were of the one-and-done variety, or from distance.

The Panthers, on the other hand, were swarming, and the Flyers had no answers. Especially on the penalty kill, where the Panthers scored on all three of their opportunities.

Sam Reinhardt had a hat trick, becoming the 10th opposing player to register a hat trick against the Flyers in the last 14 months. Jonathan Huberdeau, who just might win the Hart Trophy this season, as well as top defenseman Aaron Ekblad, each had four assists.

And although the Flyers showed some spunk coming back to make it a one-goal game, and had two guys drop gloves who you wouldn’t expect – Travis Konecny and James van Riemsdyk – Florida was just too good a team.

Konecny’s was the result of going after Petteri Lindbohm for what, in the moment, seemed like a dirty hit on Scott Laughton, but in fact was clean, even if Laughton likely suffered a concussion on the play (he didn’t return with what the team described as a head injury) –

That’s all you’re going to get on the game, because really, it doesn’t matter. We’re down to 49 days left in this forgetful season, but there was something I wanted to talk about, and it sort of related to the game so…

Provy’s position with the team

Ivan Provorov was still one of the top minutes guys on the Flyers against the Panthers. He was second on the blue line behind only the new $25.5 million dollar man, Rasmus Ristolainen. But there was one thing that was different. Provorov wasn’t on the power play.

He was removed from the top unit at the start of the season, when the Flyers put Keith Yandle in his place. But he was still playing on the second unit.

After Yandle proved not to be the answer, Provorov was returned to the top unit, but the Flyers power play has been dreadful since Jan. 1. It ranks 30th in the NHL, better than only Seattle and Arizona, and has cashed in only 11.5 percent of the time.

Against the Panthers, Provorov was removed from the power play altogether.

Yandle, Ristolainen, and the recently recalled Cam York all took regular power play shifts, and they actually scored a goal on a shot by York, tipped in by Travis Konecny:

Provorov did play on the penalty kill still. And really, that wasn’t pretty. As bad as the Flyers power play has been since Jan. 1, the penalty kill has been even worse. The Flyers are dead last in the NHL at killing penalties in that span, stopping only 65.7 percent, which is embarrassingly bad.

We already mentioned that the Panthers were a perfect 3-for-3 on the power play. What we didn’t mention was that Provorov was on the ice for all three goals.

Woof.

Now, to be fair, he didn’t do anything wrong on the third of those power plays. On that one, a pass attempt from Anthony Duclair went off of Patrick Brown’s stick and inadvertently sailed past Hart for a Panthers goal.

But the other two? I’ll let you decide first:

Provorov is actually working hard, but still loses all the 50/50 battles along the wall, which allows Florida to set up the power play.

Then, both Provorov and Justin Braun drift way too far away from the net, which allows Reinhart to stand all alone in front of Hart for the deflection. It’s on Braun’s side, and he doesn’t see Reinhart, but Provorov does see him there because of how he’s standing, and never makes an effort to either go and negate Reinhart, or communicate to Braun the positioning. It just… happened.

Then there’s this one:

Quite simply, this is a Provorov turnover that leads to a goal. This can’t happen. Especially when shorthanded.

After the Flyers signed Ristolainen to an extension Thursday, TSN hockey insider Darren Dreger, who is one of the most plugged in guys in the sport, tweeted this:

It’s possible that this opens the door for a Sanheim trade, but what if it means the Flyers are ready to move on from Provorov?

He hasn’t exactly been a fun person to be around this season.

He’s having another down year, which we can say is a result of not having his defensive partner, Ryan Ellis, for the whole season. Fine. But at some point, Provorov has to graduate from needing a reliable partner to make him play better to being the guy who makes his partners play better – and we just haven’t seen that from him at all.

After the Flyers lost their 12th straight game in late January, Provorov took one question after the game, and then, when the press conference was ended abruptly (maybe a little too quickly), Provorov marched off frustrated saying, “That was pointless.”

After the Minnesota game on March 3, interim coach Mike Yeo was asked if he was concerned about Provorov’s play lately, and had this to say:

“Well, Provy for sure he’s a better player than he’s shown tonight no question. I think that he is probably like a lot of guys right now that we’re very disappointed and frustrated with the way that this season’s gone but you got a choice of how you handle things right now. We can either really get together here and battle through this and become a better team or you can be frustrated going into games not feeling right and next thing you know a mistake happens and things snowball where we can’t pick each other up. Ivan made some mistakes, our whole team made mistakes and this is where we gotta bail each other out and that’s what good teams do. That team made a lot of mistakes too but they kept fighting, they kept pushing for each other and then they found a way to win. We didn’t do that as soon as adversity struck we crumbled. That seems to be a growing trend for us and we need to fix that.”

That answer is telling. Yeo is saying that Provorov is not taking the losing well and that his attitude about it might have something to do with his poor play.

Yeo was savvy enough to keep saying “we,” so as not to make it sound like he’s pointing the finger at Provorov, but you can bet the house that all those references to choices, and how to play and figuring it out and crumbling under adversity was pointed at the player in question.

I’ve been told quietly that the Flyers are very disappointed with Provorov and where his game has regressed. So much so, that one has to wonder, if the Flyers do need to move on from one of their defensemen, might Provorov be a better candidate to go than Sanheim?

Sanheim has been the Flyers’ best defenseman this year. As a pairing, Sanheim and Ristolainen work well together. Ristolainen even talked about how much he likes playing with Sanheim and said he hopes they can be partners for a long time to come. One has to wonder if that was part of the contract negotiations. Not that it was a deal maker/breaker of any kind, but rather the Flyers mentioning to Ristolainen that one of the reasons they want to keep him is because of how they play together.

And if the Flyers are committed to that duo, and York is now here to stay – the first of Chuck Fletcher’s draftees to potentially stick with the team – one can imagine York being more than a third pair guy.

Where does that leave Provorov?

It’s gotten to the point, I think, where the Flyers are open to the possibility of moving on from Provorov.

As recently as a few weeks ago, I was convinced they would just chalk up this season to a bad season for everyone, and see how the Provorov-Ellis pairing they invested so much into would look in 2022-23.

Now, I’m not so sure they are willing to play “wait and see.”

After all, Fletcher thought long and hard when Winnipeg asked for Provorov in exchange for Patrick Laine more than a year ago, and balked.

But if a similar hockey trade were to be offered to him for Provorov now, I’m not as sure Fletcher would be as reluctant.

As Dreger points out in his tweet talking about Sanheim, this may not be a deadline deal type thing. This can be more for the offseason.

But we also know Fletcher laid the groundwork for the Ellis trade last offseason by talking about it with Nashville about it at the previous trade deadline.

And while anything is possible at the deadline, considering Provorov’s salary and contract, It wouldn’t surprise me one iota if Fletcher is doing the same thing this year – and preparing to find his erstwhile No. 1 defenseman a new home come June or July.

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