Trending: Red Wings fall to Flyers, 6-1

PHILADELPHIA - Despite a pretty good start, the Red Wings could not solve the Philadelphia hex.
Coming into Friday's game, the Wings had won just once in 17 games in Philadelphia since sweeping the Flyers in the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals.

At one point early on, the Wings had outshot the Flyers, 13-2, and were controlling the play.
But the Flyers scored the first goal and then a late one in the first en route to a 6-1 victory at Wells Fargo Center late Friday afternoon.
The Wings (7-18-3) saw their winless skid move to eight games (0-6-2).
Detroit has allowed five or more goals in 13 of their 28 games.
The Flyers improved to 14-7-5 overall and 8-1-4 at home.
Robby Fabbri scored the lone goal for the Wings.
Scott Laughton, Shayne Gostisbehere (power play), Sean Couturier, Kevin Hayes, Oskar Lindblom and James van Riemsdyk lit the lamp for the Flyers.
Detroit goaltender Calvin Pickard (0-1-0) made his first regular-season start for the Wings, making 29 saves.
Philadelphia netminder Carter Hart, (7-5-3) who won his first career NHL start against the Wings, had 32 stops.
Up next for the Wings is the second half of a road-home back-to-back when they host the Washington Capitals Saturday night.
The Flyers will also play the second half of a back-to-back, traveling to Montreal to face the Canadiens Saturday night.
1. Robby Fabbri: It had been a long time since the Wings had scored a goal. They were shut out in back-to-back games, 2-0 by the Carolina Hurricanes last Friday and 6-0 by the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. So when Fabbri, the trailer on the play, scored at 8:09 of the first, it snapped a scoreless span of 164:37. Andreas Athanasiou and Valtteri Filppula assisted. But that was the only offense the Wings could muster. Filip Zadina had a nice chance at 11:41 of the first but Hart managed to get a glove on it. Fabbri finished with 20 shifts for 16:59, had two shots, one hit, two giveaways, one blocked shot, was 0-for-2 in face-offs and was minus-1.

Quotable:"I think we had chances tonight, there was plays to be made. But I think when we're tough to play against and when we create, a lot of stuff happens out of our own end where we're beating people up the ice, coming out, outnumbering teams three-on-two and four-on-threes, whatever it is, and creating offense that way. We have to find a way back to being that fast team and make teams pay for their turnovers." - Frans Nielsen
Quotable II: "Well, we can't leave the game to one chance. For sure if you score here or you score there, it's a difference in momentum in a game. But in the end he didn't. We gotta create four chances like that and if you do that, you're gonna score." - Wings coach Jeff Blashill
2.Calvin Pickard:Pickard was actually one of the eight goalies the Flyers used last season. He played in 11 games, starting eight, and went 4-2-2 with a 4.01 goals-against average and .863 save percentage. With Jimmy Howard suffering a mid-body injury Wednesday in the first period against the Toronto Maple Leafs and going on injured reserve, the Wings recalled Pickard from the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins Thursday. Before the game, Blashill said that Jonathan Bernier, who played despite being ill in relief of Howard on Wednesday, was available. Early on, Pickard got a break as Travis Sanheim's shot hit both posts without going in. But at 2:56 of the first period, Scott Laughton scored on a breakaway. Then when the Flyers had a power play late in the first, Shayne Gostisbehere scored on a bank shot at 19:02. In 13 career games against Detroit, Gostisbehere has five goals and four assists. With 11.9 seconds left in the second, Couturier got his own rebound to give the Flyers a 3-1 lead. The Flyers then scored two goals in the first 57 seconds of the third period.
Quotable: "I don't know why they're going in, but they do hurt. You know, up until they scored that last goal in the second, I thought momentum was on our side a bit for parts of the game. I thought we were playing pretty well, but right away in the third they score on their first two shifts and it's five-one and we're in trouble. I thought we competed in the third, it's just too late at that point." - Luke Glendening

Quotable II: "You give up that goal to make it 3-1, it's a two-goal game. That's the way it goes. You don't want to do that, obviously. Then they score right away to make it 4-1 and for a team that's had troubles like us, it becomes a big hill, bigger than it has to be. It's hard. We gotta find ways to continue to dig in when we get down for sure. We can't give up that many goals and win hockey games. Now the score wasn't much different than the other night against Toronto. The game was vastly different. I think we had the chances originally at 16 for us and 12 for them. We came out, we were outshooting them 13-2 in the first. We played way more the way we need to play to be successful. We just can't give up the rushes that we gave up at the end of the second and leading into the third period. We gave up too many rushes. So we can't give up that many rush chances against. We gotta be way better than that defensively. We gotta make sure we build on some of the things we did well, which was play fast out of our own end, play fast in the neutral zone and I thought we had real good O-zone play." - Blashill
3. Maintaining morale:It is very hard for a team, especially one with a lot of young players, to maintain a positive attitude in the face of prolonged adversity. The Wings are last in the league, have not won in nine games and have a goal differential of minus-50. Plus, the injuries continue to mount. Goaltender Jimmy Howard went on injured reserve. Although Mike Green has returned, Patrik Nemeth was ill and unavailable and his status for Saturday is not yet known. Jonathan Ericsson is also dealing with some physical issues that kept him out of Friday's game. The Wings do not get a break with the Capitals, who entered their Friday night game against Tampa Bay with a 17-4-5 record and the No. 1 spot in the Metropolitan Division.
Quotable:"We're fragile. But it's up to us to decide we're not gonna be fragile. That's the reality. Villanova has a thing about the door. They've written attitude. That's reality. We can choose the attitude we have tomorrow. We can feel sorry for ourselves, mope around, or we can find ways to understand that it's a heck of an opportunity we have tomorrow to play in a National Hockey League game against a good team on Saturday night in Detroit. That's the attitude we have to choose. We have to understand that these are unreal opportunities. Let's go take full advantage of them." - Blashill
Quotable II: "I don't know how you get it but I think right now. We need right now to find a way to win a game and build a little confidence that way, and then keep building off that. I think for whatever reason we get a little afraid out there, too. We feel like we're getting punished for every mistake we do out there and then it gets a little tougher to play. But we gotta just relax a little bit and don't squeeze our sticks and just go out and play and have fun with it. Right now we got nothing to lose. I think we gotta find that mentality a little bit." - Nielsen
Quotable III:"Yeah, it's not easy. Anytime you go through something in life it's not easy. I don't … there's no way to sugarcoat it, it's ugly and it's a hard thing to go though. I know people say, 'it's just a game,' but it means a lot to us and it's our job, but's it's what we love to do. We love to win, that's why we're here, we've got to rally around each other and find anything we can to rally around at this point and try and find a win tomorrow." - Glendening