With their massive 5-1 win over the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday night, the Philadelphia Flyers raised their playoff odds to over 50% from just about anyone who does those sorts of calculations. They are more likely than not going to be clinching their spot before season’s end and hosting their first playoff games in Philadelphia since 2018.
And with just exactly how they won on Tuesday night in Newark, there is some more confidence in this team being able to make some more noise in the postseason than previously thought.
During this recent hot streak for the Flyers, they were able to run rampant over a whole lot of opponents. Grabbing the Dallas Stars and Boston Bruins by the throat and shaking them for all the loose change they had, and then tossing them up against the wall to the tune of heavily outshooting them after 60 minutes. And even in some losses, such as the one against Detroit last week, the Flyers were clearly the better team on the ice.
It’s been a stretch of terrific play from almost everyone involved and it has spawned a whole lot of confidence in this group to not just fall ass backwards into the playoffs and then get immediately pummeled by a team who has not had to fight in the final weeks of the season. Or, at the very least show that the Flyers of next season shouldn’t be instantly predicted to be one of the worst in hockey and actually should be taken seriously.
But for some reason, after Tuesday’s win, there is a growth in confidence that this team can worm their way into a competitive first round series and maybe even win a series, because of how much they actually kind of low-key sucked in New Jersey.
Flyers’ sneaky bad win in New Jersey can mean so much more
The score line obviously went in the Flyers’ favor, as they walked away with a very, very good 5-1 win as they nestled themselves into what should be a very interesting week for them. But, in just about every other category of the game, the Devils had a massive advantage.
The Flyers got the advantage where it matters, but the Devils had everything else going their way.
| (5-on-5) | Shot attempts | Unblocked shot attempts | Shots on goal | High-danger chances | Expected goals |
| Flyers | 21 | 18 | 13 | 4 | 1.1 |
| Devils | 51 | 35 | 17 | 9 | 2.15 |
Per Natural Stat Trick, the Devils ran rampant over the Flyers through the 60 minutes and truly tried to push them to the point of breaking down and then caving in their own head to allow the Devils to start some multi-goal comeback. They did not do that, but they pushed.
And what is most likely the culprit of this is our good friend score effects. Since the Flyers got a 2-0 lead early thanks to Trevor Zegras, the Devils were more willing to throw a whole lot more at their opponent and be a little bit more careless in possession. That’s why we get a 30-attempt difference overall, but just four shots on goal separated the teams at 5-on-5. And even during the final frame, the Devils really tried their hardest to get a fluky goal or two, with a 21-5 attempt advantage for New Jersey.
But, the Flyers held on and while the underlying numbers won’t shed a positive light on them, we can all understand by just watching that game that they were able to hold their own and withstand the number of pucks hurled at Dan Vladar.
Which, is certainly not a sustainable thing. We see teams built on just having one of the best goalie performances in a certain season, then collapse as soon as they face a little bit of pressure — it just depends on whether or not they leave that collapse to late in the season or even wait until the following year to be a complete disaster. If the Flyers were continuously doing this through this hot stretch and push into playoff security, which there were hints of it earlier in the season, then we would be kicking and screaming about how this team is completely fake and no success is anything actually real.
Thankfully that is not the case. The Flyers have dominated teams over the last month. And then to have one of those sneaky-bad wins in a crucial win in the playoff race, gives a feeling of a little more confidence that the Flyers can sneak out some results in the end.
Mix in that the Flyers have added so much more finishing talent — as we all saw with Tyson Foerster’s two goals on Tuesday — and they might not need to have complete control over each win in the postseason.
Playoff series are another beast, and the winner of each series does not typically go out there and play the exact same way for all four wins to then move on to the next round. It takes some dirty, nasty, grimy, disgusting wins that make you feel a little sick inside — that you stole a result from a team whose fan base is going to run to their computer to post a Deserve-O-Meter chart on social media.
On Tuesday night, the Flyers showed that they can be capable of sneaking out those results in a tightly contested playoff series. That just fills us with a little more confidence that a series win might just happen, if they can have one of these kinds of wins in the first round.
