Steve Mason said it best: You can’t take a road trip to Florida and not come away with points.
Yet that’s what happened to the Flyers with their 0-fer at Tampa Bay and in Sunrise, Fla.
Now it’s a prolonged home stay with three games this week at Wells Fargo Center, starting Tuesday with the Edmonton Oilers, then Thursday against those same Panthers who beat the Flyers on Saturday, and finally, Colorado this weekend.
Here’s five things that have to get better for the Flyers:
1. The power play
It's fallen into the tank, from the top third in the NHL to the bottom third. The Flyers are just 1 for 19 with a man advantage over the last six games. They’re not getting enough zone time to establish much and have allowed the opposition too many easy clears out of the zone with turnovers at the opposition's blue line.
2. The penalty kill
Both losses on the road had the opposition scoring on the power play while the Flyers got nothing from their units. They gave up three power-play goals during the road trip. Given they lost both games by a goal, it’s obvious where the differential was.
3. Matt Read
He needs to get himself going. Read is not generating anything on offense, going four games without a point and scoring just one goal this entire season. Flyers coach Craig Berube replaced R.J. Umberger with Brayden Schenn on his line with Sean Couturier and they were flat against Florida.
4. Umberger
He, too, needs to do something. While his defensive play has been strong this season, Umberger continues to lack for offense with just one shot against the Panthers. The thing is, you’re not even noticing Umberger on the ice, and when that happens, it’s an indication a player is getting lost in the shuffle. Berube put him with Vinny Lecavalier and Wayne Simmonds against Florida.
5. Five-on-five
The Flyers have 22 such goals. Going into the Florida game they were averaging under 2.0 a game. That simply isn’t good enough and places too much pressure on special teams while also asking the goaltender to be perfect. Outside of Claude Giroux’s line with Michael Raffl and Jakub Voracek, other lines aren’t contributing enough. The Flyers need more five-on-five goal production.