THEY COULDN'T win on the road.
They couldn't take a punch, at least at the start of the season, and later, when the fight seemed to be turning in their favor.
Shootouts were another thing that seemed to have gotten in their collective heads, and when you roll it all together, it's kind of incredible the Flyers stayed as relevant in the local sports conversation as they did, all the way up to that lost weekend in early March.
But that's the good news, if there is such a thing to this season, why they did for as long as they did. Over this long, arduous haul a few people have stepped up as leader types, in the room and on the ice, guys who had been riders in years past.
"This is my seventh year passing by, so . . . " Jakub Voracek was saying at the Flyers' practice facility yesterday. "There are people younger than me now. Which I was never used to because I was always the youngest."
With two games left, including tonight's against the Carolina Hurricanes, Voracek still has a shot at the NHL scoring title. It's a hollow achievement, he said again yesterday, but those points may have bought something, an investment, you hope. What you hope is the trials of this season forge better leadership, that the emergence of Voracek not just as an elite player but vocal leader pays more consistent dividends next October and November when, said Flyers coach Craig Berube, a team's mettle is formed and forged - or is not.
"I think the slow start does become a mental thing," Berube was saying yesterday at the Skate Zone. "I look at that Boston game the first game of the season. We played a pretty good game. We ended up losing the game right at the end. I'm sure that starts playing in guys' heads. Again, that's mental and you've got to get over it."
Ah, but what if you can't? What if the mental strength isn't there? All season the Flyers argued that their room was good, was mentally tough enough, but the evidence sure didn't bear it out. They got off to another slow start, got into another 2-month funk, and this time, they were doomed by it.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the room was missing Kimmo Timonen, whose tenure as an alternate captain dated back four captains ago, to Jason Smith. Over the years Timonen has been, if not a co-captain, the most respected name in the room, a guy whom, Berube said, might have convinced the room that, "We'll go to the next game and find a way to win."
"I think with Timonen and [Scott] Hartnell gone this year, the room was sort of turned over," said the coach, mentioning Wayne Simmonds and Mark Streit as leaders with Voracek and Claude Giroux. "I think they've done a good job. It has to get better for sure."
Of them, Voracek was the most prominent. Not because the other three were reluctant leaders - Streit was never at a loss for words and like Voracek, Simmonds could be brutally honest. But Voracek's breakout season had as much to do with an elevation of tenacity as it did any single improved skill, and it emboldened his assessments as this team herked and jerked its way back in and then back out of playoff contention.
"I don't like clichés," said Voracek. "I think it's better to say things the way they are. Even if you hurt someone with the words. But that's the way it is right now. But if you say what you say, you've got to make sure you do those things right."
Berube's assessment is that Voracek never had two consecutive bad shifts all season. Voracek said Berube had a lot to do with that, constantly challenging a player who was already hard on himself, a player who claims to, "Want to win more than anything."
"You can ask my girlfriend," said Voracek. "When we're playing cards at home I destroy half the apartment when I lose. I really take it personally, the losing . . . "
In the end, it was the same kind of last-minute loss to the same Boston team that served as a final moxie test, one this group again failed - this time more spectacularly. In the span of 24 weekend hours in the first days of March, the Flyers blew a chance to climb within two points of the reeling Bruins and deal them the psychological blow.
"That game in Boston," said Voracek, "emotionally drained us to the bottom."
He would like to believe, he said, that it will create a larger reservoir of resolve when next season rolls around. The road woes, the awful record this season against awful teams - it all can serve to steel the resolve of a team that continues to believe it is much better than the evidence suggests, that the leadership that evolved from this will make sure it doesn't happen again.
"We have to use this as a learning process," Voracek said. "We need to be better as players. We need to be better as leaders. Because obviously, it wasn't good enough."