Flyers ‘embarrassed,’ call another meeting after loss

PHILADELPHIA — Here’s how poorly things have gone so far this season for the Flyers: they have more postgame team meetings than they do goals from last year’s leading point scorer.

Tuesday marked their second closed-door meeting of the season, albeit short, following a 4-0 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, which was the Western Conference’s worst team to start the night.

“It’s not something we need to discuss here,” alternate captain Mark Streit said. “Everybody realizes what kind of performance we brought tonight. It’s unacceptable. Everybody’s got to be better and everybody’s got to be accountable. It was a really poor performance on our part.”

Things got off to a bad start from the first shot of the game. Avalanche defenseman Nick Holden dumped the puck in off the back boards and Jarome Iginla flubbed the shot. Somehow, the puck was a perfect fit as it slipped vertically between Michal Neuvirth’s pad and the goal post like a quarter in a coin slot of an arcade game.

“Yeah, bad goal. Bad angle,” said Neuvirth, who had the league’s best save percentage entering the night and made 36 saves Tuesday. “I’ve got to have those. No excuses.”

Most of the Flyers said the game shouldn’t have ended 57 seconds into the first period, but the body language suggested otherwise. After whistles the Flyers slammed their sticks in frustration, or in the case of Claude Giroux, snapped his stick in half over the boards when he got back to the bench.

The Flyers could get nothing going offensively, somehow sending 25 pucks the way of Reto Berra for his second shutout of the season.

“It’s definitely not that the guys don’t care here,” Giroux said. “Guys work hard and they come to the rink every day and they’re proud to be a Flyer. The day we’re going to come together and go game in and game out and play as a team, I think we’ll get our chemistry. We’ll start winning games.”

That hasn’t happened yet. The Flyers have lost seven of their last eight games and as much as coach Dave Hakstol wants to spin the positive that the team got three of a possible four points in the last two games of their five-game road trip, the effort didn’t come back with them from Winnipeg on Saturday.

“We should be ready to come back to our building and play a good game,” the captain said. “Our goalie played a good game. He gave us a chance to come back and we didn’t respond.”

There wasn’t much offensive pressure by the Flyers. They dumped the puck into the Colorado ice and tried to chase it, but often turned it over for an odd-man rush the other way. When they did have the puck, they missed the net 13 times on the night.

That’s not a system miscue or, as the Flyers have proven recently, the instance of one bad night. The answer is not in the game film.

“It has nothing to do with the tape. You can throw the tape out the window,” Ryan White said. “We’re not executing. We’re not playing well enough as a team. We’re not helping each other out there. Until we start getting back to basics and start helping each other out and getting simple and making those five-foot passes that are supposed to be standard every night, we’re going to be in trouble.”

As the team left the ice for the final time Tuesday night, they did so to a chorus of boos.

“I played in Montreal. I heard that a lot,” said White, a former Canadien. “You don’t perform, you get booed. All the right to them. We’ve got to be better, especially in our own rink. We’re embarrassed. They’re probably embarrassed.”

Bellemare improving

Tuesday’s morning skate had a player the Flyers haven’t seen in a while. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who has been nursing a lower-body injury suffered Oct. 27, was with the team for the first time. He had a hard time watching the Flyers go 1-3-1 on their recent roadtrip.

“You feel you can help and do something,” Bellemare said. “When you see it doesn’t go that well, you just want to be there and be a part of it and try to do something to help and you can’t do it. You’re miles away and you can only just watch….It’s not easy, for sure.”

Bellemare may return to action this weekend after he’s had a couple practices with contact. The Flyers have missed him.

“He’s a guy who doesn’t garner a lot of attention, but he’s an important player to us,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “He brings reliable play in so many different areas and he brings energy in his own way. He’s a good leader in that way.”

Loose pucks

R.J. Umberger, who was deemed to have a “maintenance day” Monday and missed practice, didn’t play in the game either. He was replaced by Vinny Lecavalier. … Defenseman Evgeny Medvedev (upper-body injury) skated after the morning practice and said “I feel better,” but did not play.

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