Tortorella: Blowout loss to Habs 'rock bottom' for Flyers
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John Tortorella described the Philadelphia Flyers latest loss as "rock bottom" as the Montreal Canadiens dominated them in a 9-3 victory.
“They need to answer the questions,” Tortorella said of his team after the blowout loss.
“I don’t question their effort because it’s been a strong group all year long,” he added. “I’m frustrated for them because this was rock bottom tonight for us and I hate to see us at this time of year be playing this way after all the good minutes we’ve put in throughout the year.”
The Flyers are winless in their past eight games and have fallen out of a playoff spot, which they sat in for most of the year. With just three games left in their season, the Flyers are two points back of the Washington Capitals for the final wild-card spot with one more game played and the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings sandwiched between them.
Montreal jumped ahead just over a minute into a Tuesday's game and then broke things open in the second period, taking a 6-0 lead in to the final frame.
“It’s embarrassing, obviously,” Flyers captain Sean Couturier said. “In the second (period) we just gave up a lot of odd-man rushes, weren’t responsible defensively, and they made us pay.”
Samuel Ersson stopped 12 of 17 shots before he was pulled in the second period. Backup Ivan Fedotov stopped of 9 of 13 in relief.
“We made a lot of mistakes. Turnovers, coverages, any part of the game there were mistakes,” Tortorella said. “You’ve got to eat it and we’ve got to stay together and try to solve things.
“Whether it’s enough time to do what we want to do to try to get in, I’m not concerned about that. I’m concerned about just being pros trying to get some of our dignity back.”
The Flyers will close out their season with games against the New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils and the Capitals.