There's the old adage of practice like you play.
By the look of the intensity and competitiveness in practice Thursday, Mike Yeo wanted that adage to hit home with his players.
The interim head coach had the Flyers really get after it in a practice loaded with battle drills and max effort.
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Yeo wanted to see what he didn't see Wednesday night in the Flyers' lackadaisical 6-3 loss to the Red Wings at the Wells Fargo Center. It was a frustrating way for the Flyers to come out of the All-Star break after they entered it with, finally, some positives in back-to-back wins.
"I think that the wake-up call came for us in the game last game," Yeo said Thursday. "We don't want to sit here and talk about it for three days in a row. We have to prove that that's not who we are. Our competitive level was not strong enough and high enough in the game.
"We had a long break, came back from a break, and one of the things that happens on the break is maybe you forgot how hard you have to work, maybe you forgot how hard you have to compete. So we wanted to make sure that they faced some of that in practice today."
The practice sounded like a second alarm for if Wednesday night's lopsided result wasn't loud enough.
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"That was kind of expected after the showing that we had yesterday," James van Riemsdyk said. "Thought it was a good, solid, fast practice out there. Those drills were where you're kind of getting more of that sort of game situation like stuff where you're playing 2-on-2s and 1-on-1s and getting back into it a little bit more. I think that was a good practice for us."
Yeo turned up the heat in practice and it didn't hurt that the Flyers don't play until Saturday when they face the Red Wings again, this time in Detroit (noon ET/NBCSP).
"We don't play for a couple of days. You've got to compete, you've got to battle," Yeo said. "That was really the focus of the day today. I would say not a lot of technical stuff, not a lot of systematic stuff. Just more about the battle and the competitive side of things.
"Guys worked, they competed real hard against each other and that's what we expect."
The Flyers didn't have Claude Giroux, Cam Atkinson or Rasmus Ristolainen at practice.
Ristolainen's absence turned out to be the most notable because the defenseman is dealing with a physical issue.
"Risto, he's a little bit banged up," Yeo said. "I would consider him day to day. He's the one guy that might be in question for the weekend."
The 15-23-8 Flyers have been hit hard by injuries. Right now, they're without Joel Farabee (upper body), Kevin Hayes (abdominal), Sean Couturier (upper body), Ryan Ellis (lower body), Patrick Brown (MCL sprain), Wade Allison (MCL sprain) and Nate Thompson (shoulder).
"It's been kind of the story of our season, to be honest," van Riemsdyk said. "Lots of key guys missing a lot of time with injury. Certainly that's a tough part of what we do. It's opportunities for other guys to step in and play. Most teams deal with those sorts of things. ... We've had definitely our fair share of man games lost to injury from some key guys."
If Ristolainen can't play Saturday, the Flyers have Kevin Connauton available as their extra defenseman or they can recall Cam York.
"I would say that this all kind of happened pretty quickly there this morning," Yeo said. "We have confidence in Nauts and we have confidence in Yorky, so we'll see how that plays out."
Atkinson played under the weather Wednesday night and was still sick Thursday. With Giroux, Yeo wanted to give his captain a day off after his busy All-Star break in Las Vegas.
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