Flyers hoping offense comes from ‘compete level’

VOORHEES — The Flyers are in a bit of a catch-22.

They aren't relaxed because they aren't winning. They haven't won much recently because they're not relaxed.

A lot of things are being overthought in a game that requires split-second decision-making.

“You’ve got to do the right things and put the pucks where we can go back and get them, not turn them over,” Wayne Simmonds said, “and when we have an opportunity to get on them we’ve got to show the compete level that we showed out there in practice.”

A night after the Flyers showed little fight against what was, to start the night, the Western Conference’s worst team, coach Dave Hakstol’s practice featured about half an hour of full-contact battle drills.

“I’m not big on sending messages. We didn’t compete hard (Tuesday) night,” Hakstol said, contradicting himself in the next breath. “Like any other part of our game, if we’re not doing it well, we’re going to come in and make that a big part of practice. (Tuesday) night, through the 60 minutes, that wasn’t our standard.”

The Flyers are starting to fall lifeless as their offensive numbers continue to sag. They aren’t far from the bottom of the league. Before Wednesday’s games, the Flyers were second worst in the league in scoring, only three ahead of the Anaheim Ducks.

The NHL doesn’t have any official statistic for how teams enter the zone, but the Flyers have been doing a lot of dumping the puck in and chasing it lately rather than carrying it across the opponents’ blueline with possession.

They have also, as Hakstol admitted Tuesday, turned pucks over in the offensive zone, leading to odd-man rushes and goals against.

“You take what they give,” Simmonds said. “Sometimes you’re going to have to chip and chase, but if you put the puck in the right area you should get it back. If you start off by doing that, then the (opposing defensemen) are going to back off and you’re gonna have opportunity to make plays. Or at the beginning of the game, say the D are backing off and you make plays, the D are probably gonna switch up and they’re gonna start stepping up and we’ve got to start chipping it.”

If the Flyers had their druthers, they’d prefer to be a team that makes plays as they enter the offensive zone. According to sportingcharts.com, the Flyers’ goals this season have come mostly from the slot area, between the top of the crease and the hash marks. They aren’t scoring much off the rush, which is usually what teams with speed want to do.

“The thing is, for us we just can’t let frustration take hold,” Simmonds said. “We’ve got to be calm. I think we’ve done a pretty decent job. It hasn’t really been systems that we haven’t been keying on. I think we’ve been doing our systems pretty well. It’s more of the battle and that compete level that we need. We definitely got that in spades today.”

Wish come true

Putting things in perspective through his own and the team’s struggles, goalless Jake Voracek skated around the ice with Liam Idzi, an 8-year-old Flyers fan from Wisconsin whose wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation was to have Voracek push him around on the ice.

Idzi has cerebral palsy and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, so he is confined to a wheelchair. Several Flyers helped Idzi’s brothers, Lars and Jay, skate around the ice while Liam was given a stick and took a shot against goalie Jeff Hextall, son of general manager Ron Hextall.

“It was good,” said Voracek, one of the Flyers’ biggest champions of charity work. “He scored a goal…so he has one more than me.”

Voracek also arranged for the Idzi family to be at Thursday’s game against the Washington Capitals.

Injury report

Goalie Michal Neuvirth did not take part in practice. He instead saw a doctor, but said he is “fine.” … R.J. Umberger wasn’t with the team for a third straight day. He blocked a shot with his left foot Saturday, but the last official word from the Flyers was a “maintenance day” on Monday. … Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Mark Streit both left practice early. Bellemare continues to recover from a lower-body injury suffered late last month. Streit’s issue is unknown. He finished Tuesday’s game.

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

Capitals at Flyers

When: 7 p.m., Thursday

TV/Radio: CSN/94.1