Flyers already testing Ron Hextall’s patience, so what’s he going to do?

Dave Isaac | NHL Writer

VOORHEES — One of the great Yogiisms is making its way through to the Flyers less than 10 games into the season.

It’s getting late early.

A record of 4-5 thanks to familiar problems like slow starts, poor penalty killing and goaltending have them once again saying their efforts are “unacceptable.” In the past that hasn’t meant very much. No big trades, no impact moves, no accountability that has been obvious to those outside the locker room.

“I’m a pretty patient guy,” said general manager Ron Hextall, in his fifth year at the helm, “but things need to start going better here.

“You look at our team on paper and we’ve got a pretty good team, but paper doesn’t mean a whole lot. We need to play better.”

Don’t expect any trash-can throwing tirades from the former goalie who infamously went after Chris Chelios.

Goalie Ron is gone. General Manager Ron is mellow and he rolled his eyes so hard at the notion of putting a scare into his team that he nearly gave himself an upper-body injury.

“That stuff doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. It’s a new day,” he said. “I hope the players are frustrated because if they’re not, we’ve got a problem. We’ve got a problem if they don’t care, and they do care so we know that. They are frustrated. We’re frustrated. We need to handle it the right way and channel it the right way and get back to playing the way we’re capable of playing. You look at our team on paper and we’ve got a pretty good team, but paper doesn’t mean a whole lot. We need to play better.”

It’s not just the record of 4-5, it’s how they got there.

To win on opening night in Las Vegas was impressive, a 5-2 win that was hardly clean. There was room for improvement. They ran out of gas in Colorado, then came home and got embarrassed in their home opener. They’ve alternated wins and losses since then with varying degrees of effort and execution.

“It’s especially frustrating being the time of year it is,” alternate captain Andrew MacDonald said. “I think there’s gotta be some growth here as a team. It’s time for us. We talked about it before we got going here but it’s important for us to take that step and so far we haven’t. We really do have to identify that and have everyone buy in right now.”

“At some point we’re gonna have to turn the switch on for good and get on a roll here because it’s a tight league,” alternate captain Sean Couturier added. “If you slip out of the standings early in the season it makes it tough to catch up and make the playoffs and even if you do it makes it that much harder at the end. We have to figure it out pretty quick.”

The unofficial marker is always Thanksgiving. Typically, teams that are in the playoff picture on Turkey Day are also there at the end even with four-plus months left in the season. Last season, 11 of the 16 teams that were in playoff position on Thanksgiving ended up qualifying for the postseason at the end.

The Flyers were one of the exceptions but playing from behind always takes more energy, to Couturier’s point. It’s even worse when they’re behind within games in addition to being behind in the standings.

“Individually, players gotta be ready to play,” Hextall said. “That’s what the warmup is for, to get ready to play the game. You have to start hard. We’re on too level of a playing field here to say, ‘OK, we can donate the first 10 minutes.' It doesn’t work like that. You’re not gonna win too many games. That’s the consistency part. We have to be more ready to play individually and collectively.”

The general manager said that he’s seen accountability from his players “at times, but it’s gotta be more consistent just like our execution.”

“We had a good start two games ago,” coach Dave Hakstol said after Monday night’s loss to the Colorado Avalanche. “(Monday) it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t sharp. We looked like we didn’t practice (Sunday) and we didn’t.”

“I definitely think it’s frustrating to start the way we have,” said Scott Laughton, who has been the exception to the inconsistency. “It’s not like we’re going out there and playing our best hockey and losing by one goal or we’re giving up leads. We’re starting behind the 8-ball and we’re not playing fast enough. We’re not playing hard enough. We’ll continue to look at it. It starts in Boston (on Thursday). We’ve got to go to Boston and get two points. We’ve got to play our hockey and start a roll from there.”

And if not?

The Flyers can’t just wait for James van Riemsdyk to recover from his knee injury that he isn’t supposed to return until mid-November and be a single-man fix. His signing of a five-year, $35 million contract was one of the signals that the bar had been raised in Philadelphia.

So far, it’s been more of the same.

“Well we need some impact performances from our whole group,” Hextall said. “If not, we’ll see what’s out there. You’re trying to make your team better every day and when we’re playing like this, it’s concerning. We need to show up on a more regular basis from minute one to minute 60.”

Dave Isaac; @davegisaac; 856-486-2479; disaac@gannett.com

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