from David Isaac of the Courier-Post,

At the beginning of the season the Flyers' defense was popular among critics, but they actually haven't been that bad. Sure, part of it is chalked up to the goaltending of Mason, but the Flyers' 117 5-on-5 goals allowed this season is 12th fewest in the league heading into Friday's games.

So the big problem for the Flyers really is…

"The goal scoring. Again, I'll bring it up," coach Craig Berube said. "It's really dumbfounded me 5-on-5. Going into the year I expected more scoring that we have right now. I look at the 14 overtime (and shootout) losses and a lot of that is scoring. You get a goal here and there, and it's a different story. The offensive production 5-on-5 has definitely not been good enough."

At the beginning of the season, the Flyers probably didn't expect Michael Raffl to lead the team in even-strength scoring. Fifteen of his 16 goals have come with the teams at even strength while seven of Claude Giroux's 18 and half of Wayne Simmonds' 26 and Jake Voracek's 20 have come at even strength. As a team, the Flyers' 5-on-5 goal for and against ratio of 0.97 is 20th in the league.

"It's about getting to the net and getting more pucks to the net," Berube said. "That's my opinion. We get rush chances. I look back at the Dallas game there (Tuesday). We could have had three or four goals off the rush very easily. We had 2-on-1s, 3-on-1s. They didn't go in. But this time of year, especially this time of year, you gotta grind it out around the net to get goals."

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