Rough patch for the Flyers, who lost 7-3 to the Kings Thursday night, 6-4 in Detroit on Wednesday night, and 4-1 in Minnesota on Saturday. They’ve lost six of eight and now have 32 points in 33 games.

The goaltending has regressed back to October levels of concern, when were looking at Tankathon and introducing James Hagens hashtags,

Some stats from Sportradar to illustrate the problem:

  • goaltender save percentage: .880 (worst in NHL)
  • goaltender even strength save percentage: .881 (worst in NHL)
  • goaltender power play save percentage: .866 (11th)
  • team goals against per game: 3.55 (4th worst)
  • goalie goals against: 108 (4th worst)
  • total shots against: 908 (20th)
  • shots against per game: 27.5 (23rd)
  • Sam Ersson: .884 save percentage, 3.03 goals against average
  • Aleksei Kolosov: .878 save percentage, 3.34 goals against average
  • Ivan Fedotov: .877 save percentage, 3.49 goals against average

So they’re giving up a lot of goals while only facing shots at a bottom-10 rate. Meantime, there are 31 goaltenders with a save percentage above .900 and the Flyers don’t have any of them. And guess who is #1 this year? Anthony Stolarz, who is more or less platooning with the equally-impressive Joseph Woll in Toronto. Stolie the Goalie has a .927 save percentage and a 2.15 goals against average. It’s kind of a kick in the nuts because you look at the list this year and see dudes like Petr Mrazek and Calvin Pickard up there. Two Flyers legends.

Carter Hart is long gone and not coming back, but you do realize now, if you didn’t before, how solid that Hart/Ersson tandem was for the Flyers last season. It’s a big reason why they are way ahead of schedule during the first rebuild year. Ersson’s numbers dipped when he was thrown into a larger role after the Hockey Canada scandal finally crested, and he’s missed time with injury this season.