The Flyers Fixed the Crease. Everything in Front of It Broke.

Philadelphia is 0-3-2, one of three teams still looking for a first win. The Flyers opened with a 7-0 loss at home to Pittsburgh, lost twice in overtime by a goal, lost 4-1 in Tampa and lost 2-1 in Ottawa on Wednesday. They have scored six goals in five games.

Rick Tocchet has already reached for the panic button. Before the Ottawa game he rebuilt the forward lines, moved Sean Couturier up to the first line, put Trevor Zegras back on the wing and changed the power play. The team signed Michael Bunting to a one-year deal, and he made his debut on the fourth line.

In August we called Philadelphia the sleeper nobody was picking, on the grounds that it had quietly solved its goaltending. Five games in, that part of the argument is holding. The part nobody worried about has collapsed.

Is the goaltending the problem?

No. The Flyers have allowed 19 goals on 21.5 expected, so their goaltenders have saved 2.5 more than an average pair would have. Joseph Woll, acquired from Toronto in June for Samuel Ersson, has saved 3.5 goals above expected in three games and was the best player on the ice in Ottawa. Dan Vladar, whose 13.8 goals saved above expected last season was the basis of our August case, is 1.6 below in two games, one of them the 7-0 opener.

The volume is the story. Philadelphia is facing 36.8 shots a game, the most in the league. Last season it allowed 25.5, the fourth fewest. Without Woll, this record would be worse.

So what has gone wrong?

Everything in front of the net, at both ends. At five-on-five the Flyers have taken 32.4 per cent of the expected goals, the lowest share in the league by a distance. They are getting 21.4 shots a game, third fewest, and their expected goals across all situations, 11.6 in five games, would be bad enough before converting just six of them.

Last season Philadelphia took 50.6 per cent of the five-on-five chances, 14th, and finished with 98 points. Much of the forward group is the same. The drop from average to last is far too large to blame on any one departure.

The forwards are not shooting either. Through five games Travis Konecny has no goals on six shots, Zegras has two shots, and Porter Martone, the rookie the organisation is building toward, has no points and two shots in 10 minutes a night. Matvei Michkov scored the power-play goal in Ottawa, the brightest moment of a bleak week.

Is it too early to worry?

For the standings, yes. Five games is six per cent of an 84-game season, and two of the losses came in overtime. For the underlying play, no. A share below 35 per cent over five games is extreme, and it showed up against a mixed schedule rather than five contenders. Pittsburgh and New Jersey are not Colorado. The best version of this team was always a 50 per cent team with good goaltending, and right now it is nowhere near the first half of that.

The case for the Flyers, stated fairly

The patient view goes like this. Five games is a tiny sample, a 7-0 opener drags every number down, and three of the next four were one-goal losses, two of them in overtime. The goaltending is doing its job, Tocchet's new lines looked better in Ottawa by most accounts, and Martone and Michkov are young players who usually start slowly. Last season's 98-point team did not forget how to play over one summer.

The other side is what the shot clock says. Facing nearly 37 shots a game while taking 21 describes a team pinned in its own end, and line changes do not fix that on their own. Bunting on the fourth line is a gesture.

The goaltending has held up, and it is the only reason this start is not much worse. Tocchet has about two more weeks to get the five-on-five share back toward 45 per cent before this becomes a lost season.

What to watch

The next home stand, and the shot totals more than the results. If Philadelphia is still giving up 35 a night by the end of October, the conversation moves from line changes to the roster. All of it is on the team stats page and the standings.