Scott Hartnell

The Flyers came up with the usual words to characterize a loss to the New York Rangers that further buried them in the Eastern Conference playoff picture. But Scott Hartnell may have found the most accurate and fitting one. "Demoralizing," Hartnell said Wednesday after a short but intense practice at The Skate Zone in Voorhees. It had to be. The Flyers never led Tuesday night in a 5-2 defeat at the hands of the Rangers. After drawing to within 3-2 in the third period, the Flyers watched New York control the rest of the game and wound up falling seven points out of the eighth and final playoff spot with 16 games remaining.

NEWARK, N.J. - Scott Hartnell skated Friday, but there is no change to the timetable for the injured left winger. Hartnell suffered a broken bone in his left foot Jan. 22 and was expected to miss four to eight weeks. Three weeks have passed since Hartnell underwent surgery. He met with a doctor Friday. Hartnell led the Flyers with a career-high 37 goals last season, and his absence has been felt this month as scoring has become an issue for the team. "He's a big part of our locker room.

Watching the Flyers from afar (his couch), injured winger Scott Hartnell says he can sense the frustration of his teammates through his television set. Hartnell, who is out four to six weeks after surgery on his broken left foot, was a visitor at practice Wednesday, and he tried to supply encouraging words to his teammates. It's not easy to be upbeat when the team is 2-5 and has struggled on the power play. Entering Wednesday, the Flyers were 23d in the NHL in power-play percentage.

BY THE time Feb. 21 rolls around, the earliest date Scott Hartnell is projected to return from a broken foot, he will have played just 26 regular-season games in an entire calendar year thanks to the NHL lockout. For a player who missed just three contests in his first six seasons in Philadelphia, two to suspension and one to illness, that's a significant blow. It's an even bigger blow for the Flyers, who are clearly reeling without their leading goal-scorer from last season.

SUNRISE, Fla. - When Flyers left winger Scott Hartnell received a text from Brendan Shanahan, the NHL's disciplinary guru, he figured he may have done something that would cause him to be punished. "He said, 'Please call me,' and I was trying to think back to the last game and if maybe I did something stupid," Hartnell said with a laugh before Tuesday's game in Florida. Instead, Hartnell was told he had been added to the all-star team. At first, Hartnell kidded his teammates and his father, telling them he was going to have a disciplinary hearing.

SCOTT HARTNELL is a gambling man. During the NHL's mind-sapping lockout, Hartnell had two choices: head to Europe to stay in shape with the hope of carrying over the momentum from his career year; or stay in North America and enjoy the spoils of life without hockey for a change. More than 200 players with NHL contracts skated in Europe. Hartnell chose the road less traveled. He spent much of his time in the Phoenix area, working out with other NHL players in Scottsdale. Braydon Coburn joined him in some of those workouts.

Simon Gagne isn't the only Flyers winger who is back. So is Scott Hartnell. Oh, Hartnell has played three games since returning from a broken left foot, but it wasn't until Wednesday that he started to assert himself, keying the Flyers' 4-1 win over Washington. Hartnell was more physical and quicker than in any of his other games since he returned, and he picked up a pair of primary assists - one in which he won a puck battle in front and, from his knees, sent a pass to Claude Giroux for an easy goal.

Flyers winger Scott Hartnell has a cameo - and some lines - in the recent movie This Is 40 and says working in the film industry is more difficult than he had imagined. "I'll tell you one thing - I have a lot more respect for movie stars and directors and people like that," Hartnell said Wednesday after an informal practice in Voorhees. "We were on the set for 16 hours. It was a really, really long day for the minute or minute and a half we were in the movie. " Hartnell is in a scene with Ian Laperriere, the Flyers' director of player development, and former Flyers James van Riemsdyk and Matt Carle.

For the 0-3 Flyers, the news keeps getting worse. They lost two forwards from their already-depleted lineup Wednesday as Brayden Schenn was suspended for a game and the team announced that Scott Hartnell was out "indefinitely" because of an injured left foot. Both will miss Thursday's game against the visiting New York Rangers. The Flyers were already missing injured forwards Danny Briere and Zac Rinaldo. Schenn was suspended by the NHL for a second-period hit on New Jersey's Anton Volchenkov in Tuesday's 3-0 loss to the Devils.

SINCE 1967, exactly 74 teams in the NHL have finished a regular season ranked in the top five in both the power play and penalty kill. Only three of those teams have failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs - as the Flyers did this year despite finishing third in the power play (21.6 percent) and fifth in penalty kill (85.9 percent). General manager Paul Holmgren said the reason for the Flyers joining that dubious company was their even-strength play. The Flyers finished 25th in five-on-five goals-for/goals-against ratio, at 0.86 goals-per-game, meaning they gave up 0.14 more goals at even strength than they scored.

Second in a five-part series The Flyers had their share of key injuries this season, but they did not have the depth to overcome them. Other teams did. Playoff-bound Ottawa, for instance, played without top forwards Jason Spezza and Milan Michalek for most of the season, along with standout defenseman Erik Karlsson. "Injuries happen through the course of the year, and it's all a part of it," Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said Sunday. "There are obstacles and all teams face them, and when we faced them, we didn't face them very well.

OTTAWA - Goalie Ilya Bryzgalov took some undeserved flak the other night when answering a question about what it would mean if the Flyers won their final four games and finished 23-22-3. "What's the point? There's no difference," he said. "We are not going to make the playoffs; it doesn't matter whether you're two games below or two games above .500. It's pointless. Of course it's nice to win the games, but at the end of the day it doesn't change anything. " It was refreshing to hear the truth.

JAROMIR JAGR is a scholar. At Tuesday's morning skate, Jagr twirled around the Wells Fargo Center ice for the first time since leaving Philadelphia last summer and took up his familiar post at the Bruins' white board. There, he diagrammed plays for linemates Chris Kelly and Carl Soderberg, something that was a welcomed staple during his 1-year stint with the Flyers. "Everything in his life revolves around hockey," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. Jaromir Jagr is also an economist.

RALEIGH, N.C. - The Flyers and Carolina Hurricanes, underachieving teams that have tumbled out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture, played a meaningless game Saturday night at PNC Arena. But don't tell that to Wayne Simmonds. The 24-year-old right winger scored his first career hat trick, sparking the Flyers to a 5-3 victory over the Hurricanes at PNC Arena. Simmonds had such a good night that even when he blocked a shot it led to a Flyers goal. He finished with a career-high four points.

ILYA BRYZGALOV slammed his stick on the crossbar after watching Matt D'Agostini's shot bounce out of the net as quickly as it entered, simultaneously letting out one last gasp of frustration as the Flyers' maligned season drew its last breath. Any previously exaggerated reports of the Flyers' death were finally confirmed. Not even a miracle will help the Flyers avoid watching the Stanley Cup playoffs go on without them for the second time since 1995. After Thursday night's sleep-inducing, 3-0 shutout loss to the visiting Devils, the Flyers are seven points back of a berth with four games to play.

MONTREAL - Ten goals. Ninety-four penalty minutes. Three misconducts. One fight. One match penalty. One concussion. And when it was all over, one lonely hat littered the Bell Centre ice as bleu, blanc et rouge-clad fans streamed into the chilly Montreal night as bewildered as fans back in Philadelphia after watching Scott Hartnell's hat trick lead the Flyers to a shocking, 7-3 win over the second-place Canadiens. Where was that effort all season? After scoring just three goals in their last four games, the Flyers exploded for an outburst against the Canadiens that matched their season high set on Feb. 18 vs. the playoff-bound Islanders.

MONTREAL - The Flyers' offense, which had vanished for four consecutive games, magically reappeared Monday night at the Bell Centre. In the first two periods, the Flyers scored twice as many goals - six - as they had in their previous four games combined (three). The offensive eruption, sparked by Scott Hartnell's seventh career hat trick, enabled the Flyers to end a four-game losing streak and jolt the Montreal Canadiens, 7-3. In case you are still interested, the Flyers are seven points behind the eighth-place New York Rangers with six games remaining.

FACING increasingly daunting odds to qualify for the playoffs — seven points back of a spot with four teams to overcome — Flyers captain Claude Giroux was the first to say it on Friday. Giroux was asked how his teammates will find motivation over the final eight games. "Our job is to win games," Giroux said. "It's tough already; we're not making the playoffs. " It was the first time any Flyer had acknowledged that the incredible odds will be almost impossible to overcome, even though they have not been mathematically eliminated.

BUFFALO - The Flyers allowed just 21 shots Saturday afternoon, but the one that beat them wasn't even supposed to be a scoring attempt. Seventeen seconds into the third period, Buffalo defenseman Christian Ehrhoff innocently dumped a puck off the backboards, but it bounced out on a weird angle, deflected off goalie Steve Mason's skate and into the net to give the Sabres a 1-0 victory at the First Niagara Center. "It's a lucky bounce off the boards. The guy shoots it 8 feet wide and it takes a bad bounce and it goes in," winger Scott Hartnell said with a sigh after the Flyers dropped their fourth straight.