With the Flyers pair of games in Columbus and on Long Island in the books, we’ve kicked off a slate of action which will, through the end of the month, see the Flyers facing off against opponents from within their own division in eight of the remaining nine games. They’ve got a couple down already, with Tuesday’s shootout loss to the Blue Jackets and last night’s win over the Islanders in the book, and from there, but for the one game against the Red Wings, it’s one against the Rangers, and three against the Devils, and two more against the Islanders coming up.
And this feels like a bit of an odd quirk in the schedule — it almost feels like a callback to those pandemic season baseball-style mini-series they’d play — but this stretch is going to be meaningful, there’s no doubt about it. The Flyers have been playing something of a yo-yo game between the basement of the Metro standings and the murky middle, and they have a chance to really commit to a path here, and there are positives to whichever way it goes, depending on how you look at it.
On the one hand, if they can build some momentum, find some positive results, and start stringing together some significant wins, they can pretty immediately make up some more of the ground that they’ve lost in the divisional battle, and potentially put themselves back in a playoff spot (or at the very least, keep them in the hunt). But if the wheels fall off again and they start stringing together losses instead, the Flyers could see themselves drop back into the basement of the Metro standings, and even allow some of the teams ahead of them to create a bit of separation. Now, this is the undeniably less fun way things could go, but it would be good for any draft lottery ambitions they may hold.
Now, knowing the Flyers and the infinite frustration they have a knack for sowing, it’s very possible that they do neither of these things — neither winning enough games to make a strong statement within the division nor losing enough to get close to bottoming out — and this whole question of what the team is and what they’re going to do as the trade deadline draws ever nearer will be punted down the road even further.
We’ve talked a lot this season about the various opportunities that have fallen to the Flyers, and while there’s certainly a degree of chance involved here, the fact that this is another opportunity before them is undeniable as well. We know it, and the players are well aware of it as well, even if they’re not getting overly weighed down by the pressure.
“I mean we haven’t talked about it as a group, but I think everyone knows the schedule,” Joel Farabee said after last night’s game. “Obviously we have a lot of Metro matchups here coming up. They’re huge points at this point in the season, obviously you want them now rather than having to chase them late in the season. So we’re just trying to take it one game at a time and not look too far ahead. And we’ve got a big one against Jersey coming up.”
It may be taking it one game at a time for the Flyers, but the stakes are high as ever. The Flyers want to improve their situation in the standings, but they’ll also want to prove that they can sustain the strong play that they showed last night against the Islanders. Consistency has been a struggle for them this season, and there’s perhaps no more important moment than now for them to begin to figure it out.