The Philadelphia Flyers are firmly in the mushy middle of the Eastern Conference at the season’s halfway mark.
The Orange and Black are 17-19-5 for 39 points in 41 games, which may not seem all that great. However, despite having a .476 point percentage, they’re only a handful of points out of a playoff spot. At the same time, they’re also a handful of points out of getting a top-five (or better) pick in the lottery.
That’s just how it is in today’s NHL with the parity and three-point games causing a logjam in the middle of the standings. A third of the league (12 teams to be exact) has a point percentage over .600. Then there are 11 teams between .500 and .599, and the bottom nine teams, including the Flyers, below .500. The Flyers are looking like a perfectly mediocre team in terms of wins and losses, and their performance against the different tiers of teams in the NHL reflects that as well.
Philadelphia has been unable to get the better of the top teams in the league so far this season. The Flyers are just 1-11-4 against teams with a point percentage above .600, and that one win was a rather undeserved one — the 7-5 back-and-forth victory over the Minnesota Wild on October 26. Outside of that, they’ve earned points against the Golden Knights, Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers, and Florida Panthers.
A (not so) fun fact about those loser points is that the Flyers blew a lead in all four games. They had 3-0 and 4-2 leads at home against Vegas, 2-0 and 3-2 leads in Edmonton early in the season, a 1-0 lead in Toronto for 38 seconds, and scored the lone goal in the first period in Florida in November. Those are games in which the Flyers lost crucial points if they’re looking to make the playoffs, and that’s only looking at the overtime losses.
Six points in 16 games (.188 points percentage) against top teams simply isn’t going to cut it.
But then when playing against the middle-of-the-pack teams (.500 to .600 points percentage), the Flyers have been, well, middling. They’re 9-7-1 for a respectable .559 points percentage — which would be 16th-best in the league overall — in those 17 games.
To be fair to the Flyers, they are 2-2-0 against the Lightning, Canucks, and Flames, all of whom have a points percentage of .563 or better. They can hang with their peers and even sneak out a few wins against teams slightly better than them.
Where the Flyers really thrive is playing against the bottom-feeders of the league. They’re 7-1-0 against teams with a point percentage below .500 this season. The only loss came at the end of the season-opening road trip in Seattle. That’s another game where the Flyers led 1-0 and 2-0 before the Kraken scored four goals in the second period.
So in summation, the Flyers have a great record against bad teams, a middling record against teams in the middle, and a bad record against the top of the league.
Here’s how that looks:
| Opponent P% | Record | P% |
| > .600 | 1 – 11 – 4 | 0.188 |
| .500 – .600 | 8 – 1 – 6 | 0.567 |
| < .500 | 7 – 1 – 0 | 0.875 |
Their goal differential reflects that as well:
| Opponent P% | GF | GA | GF/G | GA/G |
| > .600 | 47 | 75 | 2.94 | 4.69 |
| .500 – .600 | 49 | 55 | 2.88 | 3.24 |
| < .500 | 29 | 17 | 3.63 | 2.13 |
It’s become pretty easy in terms of what to expect on any given night from the Flyers. If they’re playing a good team, expect a possibly competitive game like the past two against Toronto ultimately resulting in a loss. A matchup against a team on the playoff bubble could go either way depending on the situation. But a game against a team with a similar or worse record? That’s when the Flyers can convince some fans to buy in again.
That’s why the Flyers probably aren’t going to be able to truly bottom out. Even with historically bad goaltending, they’re clearly a better team than the likes of Chicago, San Jose, and Anaheim. Then they can show up and grind out some wins against teams that might make the playoffs but don’t realistically have a chance to win the Stanley Cup. And while they may put up a fight and force overtime against Cup contenders, it’s clear how far away the Flyers truly are.
We’ll see what happens in the second half of the season though. The Flyers have turned things around at 5-on-5 since the middle of November to get all the way up to the eighth-best Expected Goals Share at 5-on-5 (51.48%) per Natural Stat Trick. That’s large in part due to their 54.99% xGF in the last 25 games behind only the Devils and Panthers.
Who knows. If the Flyers can keep up this play at 5-on-5 and get league-average special teams and/or goaltending, perhaps this team could overachieve again this season. But for now, the Flyers are the epitome of the mushy middle.
