Flyers regress in frustrating loss to Ducks

PHILADELPHIA — February fatigue is hitting the Flyers hard, although they don’t want to use it as an excuse.

Monday night the Anaheim Ducks were getting smacked around 6-2, yet they found enough energy to take their frustrations out in Philadelphia a night later.

A bad start for the Flyers quickly snowballed and they found their way to a 4-1 defeat. They’ve now lost three in a row after winning three in a row.

“You can put in all the excuses you want,” rookie defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere said. “It comes down to us. If we don’t win games, we’re not going anywhere. We’re not gonna sit back and play the blame game. We’re just gonna look at ourselves in the mirror and just keep working.”

“We’ve got to be better from the start,” added Wayne Simmonds, the Flyers’ only goal scorer. “I think we’ve been playing really well for the start of the majority of our games the last couple months here. We went right back to where we were a couple months ago for the start of the game. It’s important to have a good start in this league.”

Early in the contest the Ducks had a full-on firing squad at goalie Steve Mason, who made 22 saves on the night. Once Rickard Rakell scored the first of two goals on the night, at 10:27 of the first period, the Ducks started getting under the Flyers’ skin after nearly every whistle and all of a sudden the game was over with nearly 50 minutes still to play.

“We lost the game in the first period,” captain Claude Giroux said.

“I think we didn’t really focus on the game. We focused a lot on their players and I think we’ve just got to play the game. Just don’t worry about the little details, worry about having more goals than them.”

Rakell scored again less than five minutes later. Chris Stewart added a penalty shot in the second period, thanks to one of six hooking infractions for the Flyers on the night.

“That’s just us not moving our feet,” Simmonds said. “I don’t think they’re a much better skating team than we are. We’re a pretty good skating team when we decide we want to skate. We just didn’t bring our A-game tonight.”

Even their B-game would have been better. Instead the Flyers regressed to old tendencies and it cost them in the standings. They’re getting close to the territory where every game needs to result in at least a point. The regulation loss puts them six points behind the hated Penguins for the last playoff spot in the East.

“It happened the same thing a few weeks back against Toronto,” said Jake Voracek, who took three of the Flyers’ penalties. “We played Saturday, Sunday very hard games. We came back Tuesday against Toronto and we were flat-footed. Exactly the same thing happened today. When that happens next time we have to make sure we are ready because we’re going to lose points.”

Recently they’ve been losing them quickly and, to make matters worse, they’ve been doing it against teams in their own division. The games in hand they’ve been banking on are vanishing just as quickly as the points.

“I think it just comes down to us, ourselves, taking three steps forward and then three steps back,” said Gostisbehere, whose assist extended his point streak to nine games, one shy of the franchise record for rookies. “If we’re gonna be a playoff team we’ve got to figure it out.”

They sure had a hard time figuring out Frederik Andersen, the Anaheim goalie who continued his sterling streak against the Flyers to 4-0-0. He made 28 saves in the win, the seventh in the last eight games for the Ducks.

With 15 games in 28 days, the Flyers knew they’d be taxed extra this month. They were taxed a little more trying to get even with Corey Perry, who had a pair of assists, after nearly every whistle.

Mason started his fifth straight, but his “energy levels are actually pretty good right now.”

The rest of his teammates probably can’t say that. They looked awfully tired Tuesday night, their fifth game in eight days, despite getting a day off Monday.

“You can’t use that as an excuse,” Mason said. “You have to get up for these games. It’s the most important stretch of the season here and we’re kind of coming up limp right now. We’ve got to find a way to get back in the win column here and it’s really not gonna get much easier.”

Dave Isaac; (856) 486-2479;disaac@gannettnj.com.

DUCKS 4, FLYERS 1
Up next: vs. Sabres
When: 7 p.m., Thursday
TV/Radio: CSN/97.5 FM