Nittymaki watches helplessly as the puck crosses the goal line.

Ok, so they don’t suck. But there is a lot of trepidation that they will duplicate their 10 game winless streak from last year coming out of the All-Star break.

There seems to be a consensus that the main reason the Flyers are struggling (Or possibly will be struggling) is a lack of effort/energy/enthusiasm/hard work/etc. And while, at times, I can see that as a problem, I see something much more concrete. And perhaps cliche.

The Flyers struggle because they don’t execute. Passes are off the mark - most often into a teammates skates; pucks are sliding off a player’s stick as they go to shoot or pass; pucks bounce away from players. To put it simply, they just aren’t as sharp as they were when they were winning consistently. It’s a hard thing to notice to the untrained eye (Yeah, the guy who’s never worn a pair of ice skates has a “trained” eye), but at the NHL level, being a “tad off” is often the difference between winning and losing.

I find it hard to believe that this team isn’t working hard enough. In hockey, a team follows their captain more than any other sport. And Mike Richards is shaping up to be a fantastic captain. Based on how hard he works, the team follows suit. It also helps that he has a handful of teammates who are natural leaders and hard workers. Work ethic is not the issue with this team.

There is one area that they do appear to be getting lazy in; decision making. I think that because of the success they’ve had earlier this season, certain players have become a little too comfortable with the puck. Jeff Carter’s line is a prime example. I could see around the turn of the calendar year that, despite their amazing success together, a slump was coming. How could I tell? They were getting too cute with the puck. They were trying to make the pretty play. At the time, it was still working. But now it’s not. That line needs to get back to the basics by just getting the puck to the net.

While they have not played terribly lately, they are losing games they shouldn’t lose. And, quite frankly, they can’t afford to lose out on these points with the competition the way it is in the East. The Flyers need to break out of this mini-funk they’re in before it turns into a season altering funk. Despite the streak last year, they still made the playoffs, and made a nice run in the playoffs. But they lost out on home ice advantage. And judging by how well some of the teams in the East are playing at home this year, they will need it this time around.