Last night’s matchup between the Flyers and the Penguins was, for a whole host of reasons, an exciting one. A tightly played game through the regulation frame, with a bit of physical engagement already built in, the overtime period brought things to a completely new level. With two disallowed goals and frustration mounting, a bit of chippiness tacked on at the end of the period boiled over into something truly chaotic.
There was a full SCRAP between the Penguins and Flyers after overtime 🥊 pic.twitter.com/qDPoWS9kw6
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) October 29, 2025
The dust up ended in a handful of ejections ahead of the shootout, and the shootout ended in a Flyers win, all making for a spirited end to the game, and above all, one message made clear — the rivalry between the Flyers and Penguins, which had cooled over the last few years, is back with some fervor.
It’s not a level of intensity that the Flyers necessarily set out to play, built into their game plan, but it’s one that they’re certainly welcoming as a product of a tight game played by two highly engaged and motivated teams.
“Obviously it’s a rivalry for a reason, right?” Nick Seeler said post-game. “They have a really good hockey team and they’ve been playing well this year, so you know that’s just two teams, competitive teams that want to win. So I loved it at the end, it’s something that’s in our game, and you know I thought we rose to the occasion.”
Despite some of the cooling attitudes of each side to the other of late, it’s a rivalry that’s been clearly easily reignited — the weight of their shared history not too far from reach and impact, it would seem — and the fact that they’re both meeting each other on relatively equal footing, both playing some pretty good hockey to start the season, had fostered a setting where the tensions could more easily build up again. The emotional whiplash from each side thinking they had secured the win in this one at some point in the overtime period certainly didn’t help those building tensions.
“Yeah I mean emotions were high,” Bobby Brink added. “To score a goal there in OT that gets called off, I think it was a hard-fought effort all game and kind of boiled over at the end there.”
Giving some extra bite to the rivalry made for a good watch, there’s no doubt about that, but the more major takeaway for the players themselves came not from a concern with the Penguins but with what this tells them about their own team’s dynamic.
“Yeah it’s great.” Travis Konecny said, “I think it starts with… somebody did it at the start of the year, there have been a couple of times when guys were standing up for each other, Grebenkin the one game, I had one, [Hathaway] had a good fight there, and then [Michkov], he did it for me, that’s the one I was thinking about, and you kind of see guys are hopping on board with it. Yeah, I mean, it was great, seeing [Zegras] jump in like that, it’s fantastic.”
Given the way that the league has trended away from these types of fevered bouts of physicality, to see this game rise to that level felt, in some ways, like a notable shift. It will make the eventual rematch between these two teams all the more interesting — though we’ll have to wait until the beginning of December to see how that one plays out — but the immediate impact will stick with the players in the interim, knowing that their group is drawing closer, and no matter the opponent, no matter the situation, there’s going to be someone out there who has their back.
“Listen, the game’s not, what do they call it, the staged fighting and all that stuff, that’s gone.” Rick Tocchet said after the game, “But I think the pack mentality, you know, you eat together as a pack, if you’re the lone wolf, you’re done, but the pack lives — not to get philosophical or anything, but I believe in that stuff — so whether it’s Trevor Zegras jumping in, Deslauriers, it seems like everybody’s jumping in to help out. And we’re preaching discipline too, we’re not being stupid, but it’s just like we’re just sticking together. And I think that’s a good thing.”
As positive as it is from a fan perspective to see a bit of vitriol injected back into this rivalry, even more important for the Flyers themselves is what the engagement in that type of game, the continued drawing into the fight in defense of each other, means for the tightness of the team they’re building. It’s one thing to preach about how close everyone in the room is, but it’s another thing entirely to step up when the occasion really calls for it. We’ve seen some resistance to rise to that next level in the recent past, but this Flyers team is putting in the work to prove that this mix is different. It’s a smaller detail in the larger scope of improved on-ice play, but it’s meaningful, all the same.
