The Philadelphia Flyers season felt promising at first. So what happened?

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- It felt like this year would be different when the Philadelphia Flyers won seven of their first 10 games. Nobody could've imagined they'd finish 13 points out of the NHL playoffs. So what happened? COVID happened.

The Flyers had 29 players on the roster this year and 20 of them had the coronavirus at one point or another. And because of that, they played a condensed schedule with basically no practices, and it took a toll.

Clearly, there will be changes this offseason -- potentially -- a lot of them.

General manager Chuck Fletcher said he's most disappointed in the young players, who, with the exception of Joel Farabee, took a step backward.

And then there's the elephant in the room: the goaltender. It's been an issue for decades. An issue they thought they had figured out with Carter Hart, but he had a horrible season. The Flyers gave up the most goals in the league.

And here's an interesting point: Coach Alain Vigneault said his Canadian players, like Hart, struggled the most this season. And that's because the strict COVID restrictions up there had them unable to find ice time to train, and they didn't come into the season as prepared as they should've been.

In fact, he's considering asking those guys to stay here in the US in the offseason to avoid that for next year.

My take? All teams have Canadian players, and all teams dealt with COVID. Maybe not on the same scale, but why was it so rough on the Flyers? There has to be more to it. And the team is going to need a major revamp.

That said, in the past decade, they've only made the playoffs every other year. Last year they got to the second round, which tells me next season, they're a shoo-in.