The Flyers were outworked, outhit, and outscored 4-0 by the Blues tonight in St. Louis.

Possible Excuses

• long road trip (albeit only three games, it was kinda long though)
• second game of a back to back
• team is flu ridden, Randy Jones/Braydon Coburn missed the game
• “the Blues have the same goal horn… we thought we were up 4-0!”

I don’t care. You just lost 4-0 to the worst team in the Western Conference. That cannot happen. Period.

B&P’s Take: The Blues just beat the Flyers in every aspect of the game tonight. Chris Mason was astonishing, stop all 36 of the Flyers shots. Antero Niittymaki wasn’t bad either, but the rest of the team didn’t hustle in front of him.

When you go 0-for-11 on the power play, you don’t win. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. The special teams, or lack thereof, lost the Flyers the game tonight.

The Blues are a young team with a lot of talent, and if they were fully healthy, they’d be threatening to make the playoffs. They’re a physical team, and boy did they take it to the Flyers tonight.

The flu keeping Jones and Coburn out meant Luca Sbisa and Lasse Kukkonen both got a chance to play. The pairing of Sbisa and Matt Carle was a minus-2.

The officials were busy tonight, and it didn’t help that one of the linesmen went down with an illness before the game. It was interesting watching two refs and a linesman try to officiate the game, though… especially one that featured 23 minor penalties.

This game sucked. I’m done talking about it. Forget it, move on. Three full days to focus on Boston.

Questions With Answers

1. Do the Flyers focus on St. Louis or do they play like they’re looking ahead to Boston? It certainly didn’t look like it. They just didn’t play well tonight at all. As soon as the Blues scored that first goal, which came immediately after they killed a two-minute-long Flyer 5-0n-3, you had a feeling it was going to be a rough night.

2. The Flyers lead the league with 52 fights, but St. Louis isn’t far behind with 43 (fourth in the NHL). Cam Janssen is the Blues leading tough guy. Former teammate of Aaron Asham. Sounds like a fight to me? It certainly was a fight, and it was a good one. I’d call it a draw but it was a little unfortnate the stripes jumped in so early. I’ll throw up the video when it pops up on the YouTubes.

3. Mike Richards broke out of a little slump last night with three big points. What’s he do for an encore? Well, he got in a second period fight with Dan Hinote to try to boost his team. It didn’t work, but at least he tried.

Comprehensive playoff update, as well as a roundup of the rest of the action in the NHL tonight after the jump…

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Now that we’re close to February and the playoff chase is heating up, this is going to be a daily feature around here. The Flyers are in a bit of a weird position right now. See, there are pretty much three groups of teams in the Eastern Conference. One, there are the team’s that have no shot — Tampa Bay, NY Islanders, Ottawa, Toronto, and Atlanta. Two, there are the teams that are right on the cusp of the playoff picture — Carolina, Pittsburgh, Florida, and Buffalo. And then there are the teams that have distanced themselves from that pack behind them — Boston, Washington, New Jersey, Montreal, and the Flyers.

But the Flyers are toward the back end of that pack. They are only four points behind New Jersey for third in the conference and first in the Atlantic. But, they sit just four points ahead of Buffalo and just eight points ahead of the eighth-place Panthers. Yes, Tuesday night’s game may have been a lot more important than we could’ve thought.

Last night, there were only two games in the Eastern Conference, but both affected the look at the playoffs. It’s rare that a Penguin win is a good thing for the Flyers, but that was the case last night as Pittsburgh rolled over the Rangers 6-2. With the win, Pitt moved one point ahead of Carolina and one position up in the standings. They now sit with 52 points, tied with Florida, but they have played two more games then the Panthers.

But it also meant a loss for the Rangers. That adds another game to their conference-leading total of 50, and another loss, giving the Flyers an extra game to pick up those three points they trail the Rangers by.

The other game that mattered saw Buffalo, the team directly behind the Flyers, fall in Calgary by a score of 5-2. A Sabres win in that game would’ve made things a lot more interesting and would have brought them closer to that next echelon of teams. They would’ve been just two points behind the Flyers and just three behind divisional rival Montreal. Instead, they’re just three points into the playoffs as we currently stand.

The next couple games are very important for the Flyers, as they will set the tone for the month of February. They need a win against Tampa Bay on Friday night. It is absolutely imperative, not only because of the playoff situation, but because they need to prove to themselves that they can beat the lesser teams they are supposed to beat. Also, this game and Saturday’s game against St. Louis come right before a home-and-home stretch with Boston. Losses against Tampa and the Blues could quickly turn into four straight, and then we’ve got to worry.

Programming Note: If you missed the AHL All-Star Game and Phantom Jared Ross’ all-star performance and you’re in the Philly area, you can catch a replay at 7 PM on Comcast SportsNet.