Odds may now be with Flyers
After four decades of mostly cruel hockey fortune, the Flyers are due for a break. A decision by the NHL this week may prove to be that turning point.
Not that there was much of it left, but the regular season is over, swept away amid health concerns. Instead, the NHL will ram directly into an expanded postseason at a time when the Flyers are on a legendary roll, having won nine of their last 10, 12 of their last 15 and 18 of their last 24. They haven’t lost back-to-back games since the first week of
January. They are relatively healthy. They’re confident. They’re good.
“We were definitely feeling ourselves there for a little bit,” Kevin Hayes said recently. “We had some good swagger. We had some good confidence. We weren’t overconfident. That’s our leadership group. They kind of set a standard. It’s a weird dynamic.”
Weird describes everything that has happened in sports recently. But when the NHL canceled the final 13 regular-season games, who were the Flyers to complain? They were not going to play .900 hockey for the rest of the season. The last game, a 2-0 loss to the Bruins
at the Wells Fargo Center may have been the first tremor in a regular-season correction that never had the chance to unfold.
On Tuesday, the league ruled the standings as of March 12 official. Not unlike declaring a game over with nine minutes left in regulation, the reaction would be a function of which team was denied the opportunity to mount a rally. The Flyers, who had nosed into second place in the Metropolitan, were almost certain to win a playoff spot over 82 games. As it happened, they not only were immediately thrown into the postseason, but were blessed with a first-round bye as one of the four Eastern Conference teams with the best points-percentage.
Though they will be active during the initial round, the Flyers will play only a round-robin against the Bruins, Lightning and Capitals to determine second-round seeding. Since training camp, Alain Vigneault has been insisting that the Flyers would be a playoff team. Not only was he right, but his team will have an historically rare chance to work back to peak efficiency in postseason games with marginal consequence, all while other teams are madly trying to survive a best-offive first-round mini-series. And should they remain hot during that roundrobin, the Flyers could steal the East’s No. 1 seed, a virtual impossibility prior to that Tuesday re-set.
With all of that, the Flyers will enter the 24-team tournament with two stable and rested goalies, including 21-year-old Carter Hart, who will not have been made to fight through whatever wall a young player usually hits in the standard, 82game marathon. James van Riemsdyk has recovered from a finger injury. And even if it wasn’t designed that way, the more veteran players will have been nicely load-managed without any risk of a late drop in the standings.
The Flyers are playing their best at the right time. And for a franchise that has been through horrific injuries, accidents, concussions to legendary players, illnesses, bad final-round matchups and a “choking situation,” and which once was on the quiet end of one of the most unlikely Stanley Cup-deciding goals in history, the Flyers were overdue for such a boost from the hockey powers.
The mega-team tournament is one of those breaks.
“It might look a little different than what it looks like when things are normal,” said van Riemsdyk, who was on the NHL’s Return to Play committee.
It will all look different because the games will be confined to one designated hub city in each conference. Philadelphia is not under consideration. The Flyers could have benefited from the ever-intense springtime Wells Fargo Center crowds. Typically, though, every NHL team enjoys robust support in the postseason. With the games being played in front of no live fans, and with no team enjoying a home-crowd advantage, the championship must be decided solely by the best players and the best coaches.
The Flyers are flush with both.
“I guess it goes both ways for both teams if we have no fans,” Scott Laughton said. “Obviously our home record was pretty elite this year and we did a really good job. Hartsy (Hart) was really good at home. Just a lot of things came together for us at home. I think we were playing better on the road as the season went on.
“It would be disappointing not to play in front of your fans. At the end of the day. I think we just want to get back to playing. Everyone’s safety is first. We definitely want to come back and have a shot at it.”
The Flyers are coming back. And their shot at a championship received a boost Tuesday. According to BetOnline, their odds to win the Stanley Cup dropped from 12-1 to 8-1 once they received the bye.
Can it really be their year?
At last?
“I think everyone has completely bought in to our system,” Hayes said. “If we get back into it for the playoffs, I am pretty confident we have some older veterans that would make sure everyone’s back to business pretty quickly.”
Soon enough, the best postseason tournament in North American pro sports will begin, possibly extending through August. The timing is strange. But for the Flyers, it couldn’t be better.