High-priced goalie Ilya Bryzgalov is the obvious scapegoat, but the Flyers’ demise was a true team effort. (Len Redkoles/NHLI via Getty Images)

There’s no brotherly love in Philadelphia today. All three of the city’s major sports teams dropped games on Tuesday night: the Phillies blowing a 4-0 lead to the Mets, the 76ers failing to clinch their series against Chicago, and the Flyers being eliminated by the Devils. That last one is, as hosts Mike and Ike said on their WIP Radio midday show, “the deepest wound of all.”

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Jochen Hecht of the Sabres is experiencing scary concussion symptoms that have alarmed his team. (Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)

When we spoke with Ken Dryden for our post earlier this week on concussions, he proposed an annual conference on head injuries that would involve every aspect of the hockey community. The first item on his ideal agenda would be to hear from those who have suffered concussions and give these players a chance to “tell their stories, very simply. This is what it’s like, this is the impact, these are the consequences, these are the stakes.”  That would certainly open the proceedings with an emotional wallop.

That was on our mind when we came across an item by John Vogl in The Buffalo News about center Jochen Hecht of the Sabres being concussed in Saturday’s game against the Blues, but the symptoms not emerging until Tuesday at practice.

“He’s not good,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said after Tuesday’s game in New Jersey. “Wasn’t feeling bad [Monday]. He took a hit from [T.J.] Oshie in St. Louis, kind of an elbow — and came off [Tuesday] and he was a mess. He couldn’t focus. Emotionally, he was really unstable. He’s in a tough place right now. We’re worried. … To come off and be the way he was tells you that there’s something wrong.”

That’s scary stuff. This is Hecht’s second concussion of the season and third in less than a year. As we know, each one makes the victim more vulnerable in the future and potentially makes the reaction more severe.  We wish him well. As Dryden said, “This is an ongoing thing. It’s not something that’s random bad luck. This is tomorrow unless you start finding a way to make a better tomorrow.”

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The Flyers sorely miss Chris Pronger's towering presence and mean streak. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

They’re last season’s Eastern Conference champion and a Stanley Cup favorite now. They have seven 20-goal scorers in their lineup, and one more tally by Ville Leino will give them eight. They have great centers and a solid and deep defense corps. They have one of the game’s best young captains and a very good mix of youth and veterans. But the Flyers’ play in the last two months is not making an encouraging case for their chances of going far in the playoffs.

As The Globe and Mail’s fine columnist Roy MacGregor wrote last weekend, it’s always wise to not take too seriously any team that plays unusually well or unusually poorly in the last couple of weeks before the season ends. So it should be easy to dismiss Philadelphia’s play in its last 10 games, in which the Flyers have gained only nine of a possible 20 points. But the team’s struggles have gone on longer than 10 games.

On Feb. 17, the Flyers were atop the East with a seven point lead over second place Tampa Bay. Since then, they’ve gone 8-11-4, picking up just 20 of a possible 46 points, and they now trail the Capitals by four points for the top spot with the Bruins only two points behind. The Flyers have said that their big lead made them complacent and got them into bad habits that they’ve been unable to break. Or that they were so busy looking forward to the playoffs that they forgot about the present. Those are plausible reasons, although the Canucks certainly didn’t have that problem in the West. They just kept getting better.

“It will be a quick offseason if it keeps going the way it’s going,” forward Scott Hartnell told reporters this week (video)

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