Flyers takeaways: Lack of discipline, defensive breakdowns sink the Orange and Black in Detroit

DETROIT — The Flyers are struggling right now.

Losers of four straight in regulation after a 3-0 defeat at the hands of the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night, veteran forward Cam Atkinson summed it up postgame.

“You know, I think it’s a good time for everyone to kind of look in the mirror and take a step back and realize what has all made us successful as a team,” he said. “It clearly wasn’t our best tonight, and we kind of left [Sam Ersson] out to dry.”

The Flyers had their chances. In fact, they had 72 shot attempts, while the Red Wings had just 47.

“We’re struggling to make plays. ... We’re just not developing much offense,” Flyers coach John Tortorella said. “I don’t think we give them much either. They get a couple of goals that are deflected in and we really haven’t sustained enough to overcome those type of things.”

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But the bench boss isn’t panicking as his team is mired in this slump.

“We got to stay together,” he said. “It’s not about getting down on then. We’re going to try to help them. We have to try to help one another and we got a quick turnaround here against a really good Boston [Bruins] team [on Saturday]. [We] played a lot of hockey in January here. We just got to keep on fighting and try to get some breaks to come our way, and hopefully regain some confidence offensively.”

Here are three takeaways from the loss.

All eyes are on Sam Ersson now. The Flyers goalie made his third straight start and is expected to carry the workload moving forward with Carter Hart on a leave of absence from the team.

In the first period, Ersson looked solid between the pipes — even if he only faced four shots on goal — as a calming presence. After Dylan Larkin hit the crossbar on the power play, Ersson calmly punched the loose puck in front of him away from anyone in tight.

But then his teammates’ bad habits crept in. As Scott Laughton said following the team’s morning skate about Ersson’s struggles early in the year, “I think some of the games we played in front of him, too, [we] didn’t help him out very much.”

The first goal was on a defensive zone breakdown that saw Larkin not picked up at the far post. He was able to knock in the rebound of a Lucas Raymond shot from the right face-off circle. Raymond was able to get the shot off after Nick Seeler was unable to clear the puck out of the zone.

On the second goal, Joel Farabee tried to clear the puck up the boards on his backhand but it went right to Raymond. The young forward fed Moritz Seider, who scored on a point shot that changed direction off the stick of Morgan Frost.

“It’s a long season and you know it’s going to have its ups and downs and sometimes you get the bounces with you and sometimes you don’t,” Ersson said. “I feel like for us right now as a team, we’re maybe not getting the bounces with us. That’s the way things go sometimes. We’ve got to find a way to fight our way through it.”

As for the third goal, it was a short-handed goal created solely by Michael Rasmussen. The Red Wings broke out of their end two-on-two. Larkin peeled off for a line change, leaving Rasmussen all alone deep in the Flyers zone.

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Despite having the extra skater, the Flyers did not have two men on the puck carrier and allowed him the time and space to reverse behind the net and feed Andrew Copp. Coming off the bench, an unmarked Copp stepped into the pass with a blast. It didn’t help that the puck appeared to deflect off Egor Zamula.

“Two goes off, off a slapshot, there’s not much you can do — player or goalie,” Laughton said. “But yeah, we believe in [Sam]. He was great for us tonight again and I’m sure he’ll be back in and we’ll get a little bit of help for him.”

The Flyers are starting to take several undisciplined penalties. Two nights after Sean Walker took a neutral-zone penalty and Atkinson was called for hooking in the offensive zone against Tampa Bay, the Flyers again took poor penalties.

This time it didn’t hurt them on the score sheet, but it still impacted the momentum of the game. Laughton was called for holding in the offensive zone when he tried to wrap around Klim Kostin in the first period. The Flyers blocked six shots during that Red Wings power play.

Laughton was also called for tripping in the offensive zone early in the third period with the Flyers down 3-0 and trying to come back. Olle Lycksell, playing in his second game since being recalled from Lehigh Valley, looked more confident in the game but he too took a third-period penalty. He was called for holding in the neutral zone.

“It’s certainly a discipline issue,” Tortorella said. “... It was a game where they did generate some off their power play; not a whole [heck] of a lot off their five-on-five play. But it just knocks us back. We can’t get into any type of flow. If there’s a concern, it’s that. We’re taking too many penalties and especially in the wrong zones, not good penalties.

“So hopefully we can try to get that straightened out and just try to get some sort of flow to our game.”

After playing with 11 forwards and seven defensemen for the majority of the games since the Flyers acquired Jamie Drysdale, the team went back to the more common lineup of 12 forwards and six defensemen.

Nicolas Deslauriers, who had only played in one of the Flyers’ past four games, drew back in on the fourth line — and dropped the gloves in the second period with Kostin. Drysdale was the lone player to not participate in the morning skate but did play in the game on a pairing with Zamula. Rasmus Ristolainen was a healthy scratch for the first time since he returned to the lineup from injury in late November.

“I just didn’t like Risto’s game of late here and wanted to get D-Lo back in there,” Tortorella said. “I wanted to get some sort of, I saw a couple of lines come together a little bit the past couple of games. So I want to see if I could stay with that but fell short tonight. We still kind of juggled the lines, trying to find some combination to work.”

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Things started off with Farabee back with Frost and Atkinson, Noah Cates lining up with Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny, Ryan Poehling centering Tyson Foerster and Lycksell, and Laughton between Deslauriers and Garnet Hathaway. But that’s not how things finished up as Tortorella and Co. turned on the blender.

“I tried to keep the lines together for a bit, but we got some guys struggling,” Tortorella said. “Coots and TK are a huge part of our team, it’s been a little bit of a fight for them. I’ve tried to hang with them. Frosty, Beezer, and Cam were a good line but I thought they were up against their top line a little bit tonight; they couldn’t handle that. So we tried to change some things around and just try to generate some offense.”