Patient Flyers in the thick of the playoff race
PHILADELPHIA » The ingredients were ripe Sunday for another show of Flyers inconsistency, which is about the most consistent thing they’ve done all season.
Streaks of varied effect have struck them, set them back, haunted them and yes, labeled them through the season’s first few months. The team that can’t play straight, offering a zig-zag pattern through its regular season schedule. A troubling cult of personality for what essentially is a young team with veteran leadership that nevertheless missed two of the last three playoff springs.
For this day, the challenge was a seemingly unimportant matinee against the Buffalo Sabres, an allegedly improved team that nevertheless entered with the worst record in the Eastern Conference. They also entered having given the Flyers all kinds of problems in their two prior meetings this season, a trend that seemed to be having a carry-over effect on this day.
“We got a few penalties early in the game,” Sean Couturier would say later. “That’s never the way you want to start, down a guy early in a game. They kind of got momentum, a few shots off that. But I think by killing those two penalties it kind of gave us momentum. Afterwards, we kind of played our game and came back and started playing the way we should be playing.”
If at some point deep into
this season’s second half, which mathematically kicked off with this slowstarting but stirring 4-1 win over the Sabres, inconsistency is no longer this club’s most trying trait, they could all look back on this Sunday afternoon game as somewhat of a turning point.
Not only did the Flyers win their third consecutive game, they at least temporarily leapfrogged the Pittsburgh Penguins and moved into a tie with Carolina for fifth place in the Mighty Metropolitan Division ... and the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference.
It’s been nearly two years since playoff positioning was a serious spring subject around here, and there’s only so much time to be spent discussing it at midseason, especially when several planes for warmer destinations and a four-day team break were waiting.
But this seemingly nondescript victory over the conference doormat does allow the vacationing Flyers something to ponder ... by reaching inward for another gear in this gamae, they may have finally altered their season M.O.
“The feeling is we are very close to the playoffs right now,” Jake Voracek said. “I was reading somewhere that some people felt this team should get
blown up during that 10game losing streak. We didn’t, and we’re staying patient and we’re in a playoff position right now, so that’s good for us.”
Realistically, it’s a tenuous one. With the Penguins scheduled to play Sunday night, the Flyers knew they might be back out of that playoff position by touch-down time in whatever resort they had targeted for some down time.
But they could also ponder longer-term achievements. With three victories over a four-day span, they all but erased the ignominious memory of an awful loss Tuesday to Pittsburgh ... which was an ugly way to start a four-games in six days homestand.
They could also look back to that autumn 10game losing run of 0-5-5 and see that since it ended with 3-zip home loss to Boston on Dec. 2 ... the season has truly been turned around.
The Flyers have gone 11-4-1 since then. Whether that means anything by April ... remains to be played out, of course. But it’s something to think about between pool-side pina coladas.
“It kind of reveals what you have in terms of leadership inside of the locker room,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “I don’t know if I can say any more. They had the right response day after day through a really hard time, believed in themselves and found a way to dig out of a hole.
That’s all of those guys in the locker room sticking together and finding a way.
“We’ve scratched and clawed our way out of that hole a little bit. We still have a little way to go and have a lot of work to do ahead of us.”
Translated to Philly sports talk, that means that with 40 games left, the haunting questions of inconsistency have plenty of time to make a comeback on the Flyers. But then, going back to the playoffs is once again something up for current discussion.
“It’s a great feeling to be in this spot,” Voracek said, “but it’s half of the season, you know what I mean? We have to make sure we don’t
go through those slumps again. We have to go every single line and try to win the games, because every game is huge from now on.
“When you look at the Metro division, it’s tight. Anything can happen for us. We have to be very sharp for the rest of the year.”
It’s an appropriate rallying cry, but one that would require a continuation of what the Flyers finally seem capable of doing at this mid-point break in the schedule: Continue changing the season script.