By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

The Flyers were thrown a huge curveball hours before the start of Saturday’s game. Carter Hart was unavailable as the result of a lower-body injury. That threw Alex Lyon into action. 

From the beginning, the Flyers were going to be behind the eight ball. They don’t have the talent to compete with the Washington Capitals. That’s been obvious throughout the season. So the result is not much of a surprise.

The Capitals’ superstar was given the opportunities to unleash his lethal shot. The Flyers third-string netminder did an admirable job given the circumstances. The Flyers continued to get an impressive start from one of their young players.

Here are five takeaways from Saturday’s 6-3 Flyers loss to Washington.

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

Last season, the Flyers faced the Washington Capitals five times and somehow held Alex Ovechkin without so much as a single point. In now the sixth of eight meetings between the two in the 2020-21 season, consider it Ovi's revenge tour.

Ovechkin scored another pair of goals to bring his season total against the Flyers to eight and his career total to 730, as the Capitals handed the Flyers a 6-3 loss on Saturday afternoon at Wells Fargo Center.

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

As the season progresses and the home stretch begins, building off positive results and taking steps forward through next season. The Flyers got a 2-1 shootout win over Pittsburgh on Thursday. Now, the Flyers have to build on it.

They should have plenty of motivation to do it, beings that Saturday afternoon's opponent handed them another embarrassing defeat earlier this week. The Washington Capitals are back at Wells Fargo Center for another matchup.

Game time is at 12:30 p.m.

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

Throughout the month of March and into the middle of April, the objective for the season started to shift to numerous priorities that the Flyers face in the coming months. One of those objectives will really not take place until after the season: finding a suitable partner to play alongside Ivan Provorov as a top-pairing defenseman.

But in season, there are still two things that Flyers can do that can only help as they move forward and start to look ahead to the future of this team. One is starting to give an opportunity to young talent to see what you have. The other is to find a way to get Carter Hart his confidence and swagger back.

In Thursday’s game, the Flyers got a little of both. Notably, they saw their goalie perform at the level he’s shown before but struggled to get to this season. And he had to take center stage in the skills competition coin flip that is the shootout to secure a 2-1 Flyers victory over the Penguins.

Here are five takeaways from Thursday’s Flyers-Penguins game.

By Matthew Ryan, Sports Talk Philly Contributor

Originally published in The Villanovan.

Coming into their series against the 6-7 Creighton Bluejays, the Wildcats were on a 12-game win streak and were ranked No. 2 in the NCAA Division I RPI (rating percentage index) rankings. The RPI rankings take into account a team's winning percentage, strength of schedule and opponents’ strength of schedule.

Villanova's first series of Big East play did not go well, as the ‘Cats were defeated in all three games, 9-2, 10-0 (8 innings) and 8-0. This was the Wildcats’ first series loss since their opening series.